John Donne's Use of Proverbs in His Poetry. Arthur William Pitts Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

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1966 John Donne's Use of Proverbs in His Poetry. Arthur William Pitts Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

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PITTS, Jr., Arthur William, 1933- JOHN DONNE'S USE OF PROVERBS IN HIS POETRY.

Louisiana State University, Ph.D., 1966 Language and Literature, general

University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Arthur William Pitts, Jr. 1967

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the

Louisiana State University and

Agricultural and Mechanical College

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The Department of English

Arthur William Pitts, Jr. B.A. Princeton University 1954 M.A. Catholic University of America I960 August, 1966 Acknowledgement

I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Thomas A. Kirby and. Professor Fabian Gudas for their helpful comments, and. to Professor Esmond L. Marilla, who directed this study. TABLE OP CONTENTS

A b s t r a c t ...... * ...... i

Part I

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter One THE TRADITION: ORAL AND WRITTEN . . . 17

Chapter Two PROVERBS USED FOR A L L U S I O N ...... i|.0

Chapter Three PROVERBS USED FOR AMPLIFICATION ...61

Chapter Four PROVERBS USED FOR AUTHORITY...... 75

Chapter Five THE STYLE OF PROVERBS AND DONNE'S

STYLE ...... 90

Chapter Six DONNE'S COMMON LANGUAGE AND

OBSCURITY...... 103

Conclusion...... 118

Part II

Preface to Part I I ...... 122

Proverbial Material in Donne's P o e t r y ...... 121].

List of Works C i t e d ...... 196

Index to Poems ...... 200

Vita 205 Abstract

The main tendency in the criticism of Donne's

poetry during the past two or three decades has been the

effort to read the poetry in the light of the habits of

thought of his age. One habit of thought or tradition

popular in Donne's time was the use of the proverb as a

stylistic device. The extent to which Donne uses proverbs

and the ways in which he uses them have not been appreciated.

I have attempted to do two things in this study:

to identify all the proverbial material which Donne uses;

to analyze this material in order to determine Donne's

characteristic uses. As a source for the proverbs current in Donne's day I have used primarily M. P. Tilley's

Dictionary of Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and

Seventeenth Centuries, which is a compilation from several

Renaissance collections of proverbs.

Donne uses 267 different proverbs a total of 352

times. His characteristic ways of using proverbs are for

allusion, for amplification of the thought or imagery, and

for an argument from authority. He sometimes uses proverbs for beginnings and endings. Each of these uses had. been part of the proverb tradition and each was advocated by the

Renaissance rhetoricians, such as Thomas Wilson, who did

i much to encourage the widespread interest in the proverb

during the Renaissance. Donne seldom uses a proverb mechan

ically. Rather, he adapts it to the context of the poem,

and in the freedom, variety, and skill with which he treats proverbs he most resembles Shakespeare. Donne may have learned more about the use of proverbs from the Elizabethan

dramatists than from the rhetoricians. Since the interest

in proverbs declined, sharply in the late seventeenth century,

Donne is one of the last of the major poets, if not the last, to use them extensively.

Since the twentieth-century reader is generally unfamiliar with proverbs, a knowledge of them is of consider able value for an understanding of Donne’s poetry. Proverbs are often needed to explicate an allusion or to understand the source of the imagery. Most proverbs have some con spicuous formal trait, such as ellipsis, or paradox, or alliteration, and Donne sometimes preserves this trait in his usage. Thus, the form of the proverb contributes some thing to Donne's style. Proverbs are primarily conventional, oral forms, and a knowledge of Donne's use makes the reader more sensitive to the conventional aspects of Donne’s thought and to the conversational tone of his poetry. Some so-called

"conceits," for example, are perhaps more accurately described as proverbs if such description keeps Donne's originality in focus. It is easy for us, too, to exaggerate Donne's learning and to explain a line or passage in terms of iii

Renaissance philosophy when, actually, a proverb seems to suffice. Finally, the proverb is characterized by common diction, and, therefore, the many proverbs in Donne contri bute greatly to his "common language." Because proverbs are no longer in fashion, however, modern readers sometimes find an obscurity in passages where Donne seems to have been using the common language of his day. 1

INTRODUCTION

John Donne, once "kidnapped" by the poets and critics

of the twentieth century, has been ransomed gradually over

the last twenty or twenty-five years and is now back home in

the seventeenth century. No longer is his poetry considered

the norm for judging poetry and we do not hear so much any

more about the "dissociation of sensibility" which followed

Donne. One sign of his return to his own century is that no

one today argues that Donne Is a greater poet than Milton;

another is that he is much less an inspiration, it seems,

for the younger contemporary poets.^ In tracing the strong

reaction against Donne as a "modern," Miss Helen Gardner

finds its beginning in Rosemond TuveTs wellknown study of

the differences between Elizabethan and metaphysical imagery

and between Renaissance poetic theory and practice and modern p theory and practice. Much of the ransom was provided by historical studies by scholars reacting to the excesses of

the "new criticism." One of these scholars, Douglas Bush,

comments on the controversy between the new critics and the historical critics:

•^-Helen Gardner, "Introduction," John Donne: A Collec tion of Critical Essays, ed. Helen Gardner (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1^62), p . 1 1 .

2 Ibid., p. 1 0 . 2

In the modern view, Johnson's sane but limited neoclassical insight was focused largely upon degenerate extravagances and missed the essen tials of the metaphysical genius. These would be, to attempt a brief summary of modern defini tions: a philosophic consciousness as the matrix of amatory, religious and other poetry; the con centrated, pregnant fusion of thought and feeling, of argumentative logic and passion; the assimila tion by an active and unified sensibility of widely different ideas and kinds of experience; the questioning exploration of the individual poet's complex impulses and attitudes in dramatic tension and conflict, rather than the presentation of an assured, preconceived result--a special kind of private rather than public poetry; a texture and tone not in one key but of mingled seriousness and ironic wit, of contrast and surprise; the homely and realistic or the erudite rather than the fanciful or mythological image, and the intellectual, organic, and functional rather than the decorative or illustrative use of it; the language and rhythms of speech, of expressive _ dissonance, instead of the smoothly "poetical."-*

Following this excellent summary of several years of criti cism, Bush remarks that modern views embodying many of these judgments have been formed after the fact and that some of the ideas are restatements of the views of nineteenth cen tury critics who were in the romantic tradition. He then describes the results of several attempts to read Donne In the context of his own day, pointing out that historical criticism would add "important correctives" to the modern view which he has just summarized. These correctives are:

that central elements of sensibility and tech nique, while exploited by the metaphysical poets with distinctively original results, were present in orthodox theory and practice; that definitions based largely an Donne do not apply very well to other so-called metaphysicals; that such defini tions somewhat distort Donne himself by seeing

^English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, 1600-lbbQ (Oxford, 1962), pp. 130-131. 3 only psychological and technical novelties and neglecting the current rules of decorum governing the various poetic genres; that Donne’s unified sensibility was really multiple and decidedly not philosophical, although he used philosophical ideas; that much of what is now taken to be peculiarly metaphysical or at least Donnian learning, from alchemy to religious iconography, was in its own day more or less common property; that supposedly unrelated ideas and images were less startling in an age that accepted the great chain of being and the divine unity and corres pondence of all parts of creation.^-

The value of historical criticism to our understand ing of Donne was recognized early in this century by Sir

Herbert J. C. Grierson, whose 1912 edition of the poems marked the beginning of the intense interest in Donne in the twentieth century. In the introduction to his edition,

Grierson distinguishes between the approach of the literary historian and that of the lover of literature:

For the lover of literature, literary history has an indirect value. He studies history that he may discount it. What he relishes in a poet of the past is exactly the same essential qualities as he enjoys in a poet of his own day— life and passion and art. But between us and every poet or thinker of the past hangs a thinner or thicker veil of out worn fashions and conventions. The same life has clothed itself in different garbs; the same passions have spoken in different images; the same art has adapted itself to different circumstances. To the historian these old clothes are in themselves a subject of interest. His enjoyment of Shakespeare Is heightened by finding the explanation of Falstaff’s hose. Pistol's hyperboles, and the poet’s neglect of the Unities. To the lover of literature they are, until by understanding he can discount them, a dis advantage because they invest the work of the poet with an irrelevant air of strangeness. He studies them that he may grow familiar with them and forget them, that he may clear and intensify his sense of what alone has permanent value, the poet’s indivi duality and the art in which it is expressed.5

^Bush, pp. 131-132. 5>The Poems of John Donne (London, 1912), II, vi. Donne criticism has turned more and more to an effort to lift the "veil of outworn fashions and conventions" and readers have become more aware that the "clothes" are old rather than modern, So, for example, Donne’s relation to the "new philo sophy which calls all in doubt" is now seen in the light of his relation to scholastic philosophy;^ Donne the "metaphysi cal" poet is now seen in a broader scope as the monarch of wit.7 Donne the anti-Elizabethan and anti-Petrarchan relied more on Elizabethan and Petrarchan conventions, it has been Q demonstrated, than was once thought. Studies of the supposed

"school of Donne" have revealed that he was not "fundamentally antithetical to Jonson, whose influence even cooperates in certain directions with that of Donneand that Donne’s

influence must be seen in terms of the "general sensibility of the age,"-1-® Recently, Donne's school has been interpreted as those fifteen or more courtiers and wits with whom he was closely associated and for whom, it is held, he wrote his

^See C.M. Coffin, John Donne and the Hew Philosophy (New York, 1958); M.P. Moloney, John Donne; His Flight from Mediaevalism, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, Vol. XXlX, Nos. 2-3; M.P. Ramsay, "Donne's Relation to Philo sophy" in A Garland for John Donne, ed. T. Spencer (Glou cester, Mass., 195b)> pp. 101-120. 7 See J.B. Leishman, The Monarch of Wit (London, 1965). Q See Rosemond Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery (Chicago, 1914-7) and Pierre Legouis, Donne the Crafts man (Paris, 1 9 2 8 ).

^George Williamson, The Donne Tradition (New York, 1958), p. 230.

10Ibid. 5 poetry.^ We have learned a great deal, too, about the rela tion of Donne’s religious poetry to the methods of meditation popular in his own day.1^ Miss Helen Gardner, who has contri buted greatly to an understanding of Donne's religious poetry, believes that the attempt to read Donne in the light of a knowledge of the habits of thought of his age, and to define his originality by a study of the traditions that he turned to his own purposes, is still the road that offers the "best hope of arriving at the secret of his power."^3

There remains at least one tradition in Donne's poetry which has, to my knowledge, never been examined. This is the tradition of the proverb used as a stylistic device, a tradition very much alive in Donne's own day, and it had been one of the central traditions in the course of English

1 iterature.

- - The purpose of this study is to determine to what extent and in what ways Donne uses proverbs in his poetry; that is, to read Donne in the light of a particular habit of thought of his age. The identification of the proverbial material in the poetry, which constitutes Part II, provides the basis for Chapters II-VI of Part I. By itself, Part II is the evidence that one of Donne's significant sources, hitherto no.t fully recognized, is proverbial material. The

■^A. Alvarez, The School of Donne (New York, 1961). 12 Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven, 19

13 Gardner, p. 11. 6 chapters of Part I (except the first, which is a sketch of the proverb tradition in English literature) are attempts to analyze the various uses Donne makes of the material. Part I is, then, a study of one element of Donne’s style, if style is understood not as something detachable from the literary work, but as the recurrent features of the texture of meaning.1^-

One of these features in the texture of meaning of Donne’s poetry is the proverb.

The chief values of this study are an increase in our knowledge of Donne's sources and a better understanding of his style. These values have long been recognized as the fruits of the study of a writer’s use of proverbs. Morris

Palmer Tilley, one of the outstanding students of the proverb in the Renaissance, has said that "among the sources of a writer, the proverbial material used by him should be recog nized."-*-^ Tilley himself made major contributions to our knowledge of the proverbial material used by Lyly and -Shake speare. He "felt a deep responsibility to Shakespeare," says Hereward T. Price, who adds that:

Tilley was convinced that the proverbs were of inestimable value because, in particular, they clear up passages hitherto obscure and, in general, they lead to a more intimate under standing of important characteristics in Shake speare’s style.16

"^For this definition of style, see Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics (New York, 1958)* P» 222. Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, 1950), p . viii.

-8Ibid., p . v . Shakespeare's use of proverbs has been studied to some extent, but Donne's not at a l l . ^

The value of a knowledge of proverbs in clearing up passages thought to be obscure is especially evident in

Donne's poetry. Many have found in Donne as obscurity which they attribute to his carelessness or wilfullness or to his esoteric knowledge. But many passages prove, upon examina tion, to be proverbs or allusions to proverbs which seem obscure to us because we have lost touch with proverbs.

In Chapters II-IV, I discuss those features of

Donne's style which became clear after analyzing the mass of proverbial material in Part II. The terms of classification,

"allusion," "amplification," and "authority," I have taken from the Renaissance rhetoricians or from Tilley. One chap ter is devoted to each of these uses._ Chapter V is concerned with the usual stylistic traits of the proverb and their relationship to Donne's style. Chapter VI considers some of the general comments on the metaphysical style, and here I attempt to show that a knowledge of proverbs as a source for a metaphysical poet, in this case, Donne, forces us to modify some statements about metaphysical obscurity and helps us to

■^Most of the scholarship on Shakespeare•has been directed to the identification of the proverbial material. Tilley has a "Shakespeare Index" in his Dietionary, pp. 8 03- 8 0 8 , See also Charles G. Smith, Shakespeare * s'Proverb Lore (Cambridge, 1963). Some studies of the functions of proverbs in particular plays are: "Some Functions of Proverbs in Romeo and Juliet," by Sister Marie Agatha Vanderheide, S.P., an unpublished Master's thesis at Catholic University, Washington, D.C., 1954 an8- "Proverblalism in Coriolanus," by Sister M. Clarita Felhoelter, an unpublished doctoral disser tation at Catholic University, 1956. understand better statements about colloquial diction and conversational tone. I say "In this case, Donne," for I am certain that both Vaughan and Herbert used proverbs extensive ly, and I believe that studies of their use will, along with other studies such as this one, bring about some modification of our view of the metaphysical poets.

The method I have used to identify proverbial material

in Donne seems to be the only practical one, although it does have some weaknesses. T d recognize a proverb, one must first know the proverb, obviously, but this presents a difficulty for most twentieth-century readers, who come in contact with few proverbs in their speech or their reading. Without

Tilley’s Dictionary, a study of this type would present great difficulties. But it is possible after reading Tilley’s

Dictionary or The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs to familiarize oneself with a great number of proverbs. More over, one develops a certain feeling for a proverb that permits a tentative identification which can then be checked against the dictionaries. Many of the identifications were stumbled on while I was checking on an entirely different proverb. The weakness of this method is that one never feels he has identified absolutely all the proverbial material. An allusion may have escaped him here, an alteration there. In some cases, a phrase or a line In Donne resembles a proverb so closely that, although identification is not certain, it seems likely. It is probable, then, that of any errors in

Part II, most are on the side of inclusiveness. 9 An alternate method, for identifying a proverb would have been to use a definition as a touchstone. But the. difficulties with this method are far greater than with the one I have used, for the definition of the proverb has never been fully achieved. It is a task that is, according to

Archer Taylor, "too difficult to repay the undertaking" if the intention is to obtain a definition that can be used as a touchstone. Taylor believes that we can identify a proverb not through a definition, but by an "incommunicable quality /which/ tells us this sentence is proverbial and that one is not." Because of this incommunicable quality,

Taylor remarks that those who are not native speakers of a language will never recognize all its proverbs, which means that "much that is truly proverbial escapes us in Elizabethan and older English."1^

Although Taylor would be content with a provisional definition of the proverb as "a saying current among the folk," since "so much of a definition is indisputable"1^ and the significance of other elements could be seen later,

Tilley notes in the Foreword to his dictionary that such a definition is too limited. He says that the proverb collec tors and the writers of the period from 15>00 to 1700 had an elastic conception of what was proverbial, admitting material into their collections which seemed to them to be proverbial or "at least of sufficient currency to be entitled to that

■^Archer Taylor, The Proverb (Cambridge, 1931)* p. 3. IQ 'Ibid., p. 3- 10 term."^0 An example of that elasticity is provided by

John Heywood's A Dialogue conteining the number in effect of all the proverbes in the Englishe tongue (15^6). In a recent study of this work, Rudolph E. Habenicht concludes that:

, . . the Dialogue contains far more than just 'proverbs.1 In a"total of 2.,7kb lines, there are not only 1,139 proverbs and 128 proverbial comparisons and epithets, of which 113 appeared first in the revised (c. 1549) edition of the Dialogue, but also 200 figurative expressions (not recorded elsewhere as proverbs), and 127 idiomatic phrases and oaths are recorded by Tilley as proverbs and are here so listed in the index. About 228 proverbs and 60 proverbial comparisons and epithets are not recorded either by Tilley or by ODP /Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs/. Together these sayings make the Dialogue an important source for a knowledge of the colloquial idiom of the first half of the sixteenth century.21

In spite of this loose and flexible understanding of the term "proverb" by English writers and collectors, students and scholars have found it necessary to develop a working definition and to determine the distinctions, where possible, among related terms such as adage, aphorism, sententia, apothegm, charm, and learned and popular proverbs. The distinctions are not easy. The proverb is distinct from the maxim in that its wisdom is of a "homely, popular variety, which is expressed through figures and in language similarly homely and popular." 22 The true proverb is distinct from the proverbial comparison, such as "merry as a cricket," in

20Tilley, p. v. 21 Rudolph E. Habenicht, ed., John Heywood's A Dialogue of Proverbs (Berkeley, 1963), p. 6JLj.. 22Habenicht, p. 2. 11 that the proverb Is a complete sentence; the comparison is not a wise saying but is used for descriptive and intensive p u r p o s e s . 23 The differences between the proverb and similar forms have been summarized by Habenicht as follows:

The common proverb is a particular species of a large body of moral maxims and sententiae which express some counsel, ethical precept, or truth in a succinct and memorable way. It dif fers from the adage, or maxim, in its language and style, the proverb being usually concrete, metaphoric, and frequently rhythmical; the adage is usually abstract and prosaic. The proverb, furthermore, is figurative in concealing a ’hidden' meaning, whereas the wise saying is direct in expression and unenigmatic in meaning.2^

Habenicht admits, however, that such a distinction is an

ideal one, "for the common proverb in the sixteenth century

is frequently confused or loosely associated with the clas sical adage, the wise 'proverbs’ of Solomon, simple figura tive expressions, or the sage sayings of the Fathers,One writer, while admitting that the early Tudor writers left no definition of the proverb, studied the various sayings which they called proverbs and concluded that by the term "proverb" they meant:

. . . a grammatically complete statement, in common use, expressing a generalization of some kind or prescribing some type of behavior, brief in its form of expression, and usually, but not always, crystallized by some conspicuous formal characterist ic,26

^Habenicht, pp. 6L|.-65. 2^-Ibid. , p. 1. 25 Ibid., p . 1.. ^ S e e the unpublished dissertation by Thomas Karl Mauch, "The Role of the Proverb in Early Tudor Literature" (U.C.L.A., 1963), p. 10. 12

There were several synonyms for "proverb" used by

Renaissance writers, further evidence that the term was not defined with much precision. Some of these synonyms are:

"ballad," "byword," "old clerk's saw," "text," "old said

saw," "old common saying," and "word," The adage or wise

counsel was sometimes called "proverb" and vice versa. For

example, Sir Thomas Elyot says in his Dictionary (1^38 ), that he has not omitted "prouerbes, called Adagia, or other quicke

sentences" which he considers "necessarie to be had in remem- braunce," and John Palsgrave quotes an English proverb in

Acolastus in this way: "... in our adage it is hard hal-

tyng before a c r y p l e . " ^ ?

Quite often the writer indicated for his readers that he considered a saying as proverbial by some introduc

tory phrase, such as "The prouerb goeth . . . "As the p D Prouerb is . . . ," "as we say , . . "We say . . . , ne:o

There were also attempts to indicate either a foreign source

or analogue, or to specify that the proverb was English. Ben

Jonson says in Epicoene II. vi. 10,^ 11 Salt at senex, as it is

i1 the prouerbe," indicating the Latin origin of the proverb,

"All is well, the old man dances." From Chaucer's time and

earlier there appear such identifying phrases as "the common

proverb," the "proverb of old English," "our English proverb."

The proverb was also designated as "the old proverb," an "old

ancient proverb," "the proverb of antiquity," "the old spoken

2^Elyot and Palsgrave are quoted by Habenicht, p. 1.

2^Tilley, pp. v-vi. 13 oq proverb" or "the old and trite proverb." A common seven

teenth-century reference was to "the vulgar proverb,"

indicating, perhaps, the shift in literary taste which led

gradually to the depreciation of the proverb in the eighteenth

century. Donne, however, often uses some neutral phrase to

identify a proverb, as will be seen in Chapter IV.

There is no sharp distinction between the proverb

and the apothegm or the proverb and sententiae. Charles

Smith, in a recent study of Shakespeare's proverb lore,

reminds us of Tilley’s point that the conception of the pro

verb was elastic, and he therefore makes no distinction between

the two in his study, following the Renaissance practice. 30

The distinction between the proverb and an apothegm seems to

be not in kind but in the frequency of repetition. Taylor points out that some simple apothegms such as "Live and learn,"

"Them as has gets," "Haste makes waste," and "What's done is

done" are characterized by a lack of metaphor but these "bold

assertions" are recognized as proverbial because they are •51 often used and can be applied to many situations . It is

these simple apothegms, he says, which are the most difficult

to recognize in a later age when they are no longer used and we have lost our ear for them. 32

Another possible distinction is between the "learned" proverb and the "popular" one, and it would be easy to expect

29 Habenicht, pp. 1-2. -^Shakespeare's Proverb Lore (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)» p. 3. ■^Taylor, p. 3>. ^Ibid. , p. 6 . 14 Donne to use the former rather than the latter, because of the emphasis that has been placed on his learning. This dis tinction is, however, not considered proper by those who have studied the proverb. It is true that the "learned" proverb can often be traced because it has been preserved in literature from classical times on down, whereas the "popular proverb has no such record. So, "Know thyself" might "have been a proverb long before it was attributed to any of the seven wise men or was inscribed on the walls of the temple of Delphic Apollo. "^3

Proverbs and proverbial phrases ;>rere one element of colloquial language, but the proverb i*as also considered a rhetorical figure. A rhetorical trait found in the simplest non-metaphorical aphorisms is parallel structure, frequently accompanied by contrast with respect to words, structure, and thought. Taylor gives the following examples:

Simple proverbial forms like Many men, many minds; Like master, like man; The more he has, the more he wants; Nothing venture, nothing win; Testisunus, testis nullus are dominated by paral lelism. The repetition of the same word in two phrases heightens the effect of -the contrasting second members. Many proverbs employ contrast alone by separating contrasting words with a colorless predicate: Hinds ight is better than fores ight; The longest way round is the"shortest way home. A more complicated use of these devices is seen in Young saint, old devil; Man proposes, God disposes; The nearsr the church, the farther from God; Spare the rod and spoil the child; Where ignorance hTThs, HJis folly to be wise. Here we haveparallelism of struc ture used to emphasize the contrast in words. Khere ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise

^^Taylor, p. 6. IS illustrates a chiastic use of contrast with parallelism of structure .3k-

These rhetorical characteristics of proverbs make it quite likely that they would interest a man who was both poet and preacher. Chapter V is a discussion of the rhetorical traits of proverbs which are part of Donne's style.

Although it has been necessary to examine briefly the loose and strict definitions of the proverb in order to know what kind of material the study deals with, the problem of definition need not be solved now. In this study I have not used a definition to identify material as proverbial. Rather,

I have admitted as proverbial only those expressions already listed in one of the two standard collections of English proverbs, Tilley's A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and The Oxford

Dictionary of English Proverbs. Since- these two works draw their material largely from earlier collections of proverbs which, as Tilley says, had an elastic notion of the proverb, it could be said that I have adopted the loose definition of

"proverb." Part II, then, includes comparisons, adagia, and sententia, all of which might not be included in a collection of proverbs strictly conceived. My chief interest is in the conventional quality of the material Donne used, in the ex pressions in his poetry which were popular in his day, and therefore the Inclusive definition is the desirable one. It is this proverbial material In a broad sense which furnishes

^Taylor, pp. 11^3 evidence of how closely in contact was a writer of a distant age with the popular ideas and popular expressions of his day. There is no more certain way, I believe, for estimating the degree to which a writer observed the speech habits of his day and, conversely, appealed to his audience by using-familiar expressions. The proverb (or proverbial material), it should be remembered, is primarily a spoken form, and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were "soaked in proverbs.There were many streams whose confluence produced the flood of proverbs in the Renaissance, some of which began centuries earlier. All of these streams or traditions can be grouped under two aspects, oral and written, and a brief survey of these two is the subject of Chapter I.

^Janet Heseltine, "Introduction," The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, comp. William George Smith, 2nd ed. (Oxford, R ’4 6 7 > P.7 x iv. 17 Chapter I

THE TRADITION: ORAL AND WRITTEN

When Donne used proverbs in his poetry or in his preaching* or, for that matter, in his conversation, he was simply doing what everyone else was doing in his day.

Proverbs were so much a part of the culture of not only

Renaissance England, but of Renaissance Europe,! that their use would have surprised no one. This chapter will show that the popularity of the proverb in Renaissance England was the culmination of a long tradition by outlining the tradition from the beginnings through the seventeenth cen tury. The purpose of this outline is two-fold: to emphasize the number and variety of influences to which Donne was ex posed; to examine briefly some of the more important literary uses to which the proverb had been put from the earliest

English literature through Shakespeare, thus providing a basis for an evaluation of Donne's place within the tradi tion of employing the proverb as a stylistic device.

In order to stress the peculiar nature of the pro verb, namely, that it is primarily an oral form, I have organized the tradition into two parts, oral and written.

Since proverbs owe their birth to the tongue rather than the

1Tilley, p. vii. 18 p pen, and appeal primarily to the ear, not the eye, they provide us with an insight into the oral qualities of Donne1s poetry in a way that nothing else can. When Donne used a proverb, he was using a habit of speech shared by most of his contemporaries. Conversely, when Donne learned a proverb he might have learned it from listening, not from reading.

We are so bound by the printed page that we are likely to think of a writer's sources only in terms of written origins.

For example,.once we learn that many of the proverbs used by

Donne also appear in two collections of proverbs by his friend

George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (I6I4.O) and Jacula Pruden- tium (1651), we are inclined to think of Donne learning from

Herbert's manuscript or of Herbert learning from Donne's poetry. It seems just as likely, however, that both learned the proverbs from various sources, some oral, some written.

In Donne's day, proverbs appeared everywhere. They were in all forms of writing, from school grammars to politi cal satires. They were used for instruction in foreign languages, and they were illustrated in emblems and paintings.

They were used in the marketplace and in the court. They were "everybody's weapon," "the small change of conversation."3

The status of proverbs in Elizabethan England, described by

Heseltine in the following passage, was probably little changed in the first half Df the seventeenth century:

p B. J. Whiting, Proverbs in the Earlier English Drama (Cambridge, 1938), pp. x-xi.

^Tilley, p. viii. 19 By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign every one-- scholars, wits, courtiers, writers, the queen herself--spoke and wrote in proverbs, even invented them. They welcomed them for their common sense, or because of the 'sweet relished phrases’ that struck the wide-open eyes and ears of the time with a delicious novelty,U

It is, of course, impossible to determine with much certainty all the oral influences on Donne. There are, how ever, at least three situations in which Donne must have heard and have spoken proverbs: the family, the pulpit, and the theatre.

Some attention has already been given to Donne's family as the source of ideas that appear in his poetry.

Clay Hunt believes that Donne’s home environment helps explain why his "literary Imagination could never get far from matters of religion, and why imagery from scholastic theology kept crowding into even his flashily cynical early love poems.Helen Gardner points out that in poems like

"La Corona,” "A Litany," and the Holy Sonnets, "Donne is using as the material of his poetry ways of devotion he had learnt as a child.The "La Corona" sonnets, furthermore, are based on habits of liturgical oral prayer, rather than on habits of reading and private meditation.7 Donne must have learned much orally, too, about proverbs from his family.

^'Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, p. xiv.

^Clay Hunt, Donne’s Poetry: Essays in Literary Analys is (New Haven, 19511)5 p. 1?<3.

^The Divine Poems (Oxford, 1952), p. lv.

7Ibid., p. xxii. 20 Since proverbs were widely used for the instruction D of the young in manners and morals, Donne’s family might

have so used them. But there was every reason for the Donne family to have a special interest in proverbs: among its

members were two distinguished writers who did much to pro

mote the interest in proverbs. Donne’s grandfather was John

Heywood, the "mad, merry wit." Heywood’s Dialogue of Proverbs

was the second collection of proverbs in English, following

Nicholas Udall's Apothegms.9 in the Dialogue, an older man

counsels a younger man by means of proverbs.Heywood’s

plays, too, are full of proverbs.

Donne's great uncle was Sir Thomas More, who used

proverbs frequently in both his polemical writings and in

his meditative work, such as the Dialogue of Comfort, which

also has the form of an older man instructing a younger 1 1 through proverbs. •■L Thomas More recalls his own father's

telling him that selecting a good wife is like trying to

pick an eel out of a bag of snakes, a truth, of experience 12 ■which had become proverbial. It is not hard to imagine

John Donne himself hearing such practical wisdom from his

own father or from some other member of the family circle.

Furthermore, a close friend of Sir Thomas More’s was Erasmus,

^Habenicht, p. 3. o in 'Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 3. ■^For More’s use of proverbs, see Mauch and my un published Master’s thesis, "Proverb Lore in St. Thomas More’s Dyalogue of Comforte" (Catholic University, I960). 12 The Works of Sir Thomas More, Knight . . . , ed. William Rastell (155?),_p. 163, quoted by E7E. Reynolds in St. Thomas More (New York, 1957), p. 9. 21 who probably had greater influence in the spread of proverbs

in the Renaissance than any other man. With such distin guished men, all of whom used proverbs extensively, belonging to the family circle, it seems likely that the Donne family would have used them often in day-to-day conversation.

Proverbs in family speech then would have influenced Donne as strongly as family habits of prayer.

Another major influence upon Donne would have been the pulpit, one of the many forces at work for the diffusion of proverbs in the sixteenth century.^ The Bible, the chief source for the preacher, especially the. books of Pro verbs and Eccleslasticus, was an inexhaustible source of proverbs.^ In the Christian era, the Church Fathers some times "reshaped in more pregnant form the words of Biblical wisdom"^ and later, the translations of the* Bible into the modern languages provided many proverbial expressions. Pro verbs were collected In both Latin and the vernacular specifi cally for use by preachers. Although many of the sayings preserved in the homilies are trivial and artless, G. R. Owst believes that we should be grateful to the preacher because the proverbs "reveal, sometimes with almost startling effect, the unchanging psychology of our race, the eternal sameness of conversational topic, the similarity of outlook; and the

■^J.L. Lievsay, Stefano Guazzo and the English Renais- sance: 1575-1675 (Chapel Hill, 1951),"p. 11$.

^Taylor, p. 53. ■^G.R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1933)* P • 4-2. 22 similarity of impression, even an identity of phrase through out the centuries."-*-® It is in these proverbs, Owst says, that we hear "the cry of an ever-burdened, almost despairing peasantry that loves to shake off its sorrows and its fears with these quaint pessimistic folk utterances."I?

Donne was aware, no doubt, that proverbs were useful, even necessary elements in a sermon for the reasons described by Owst. Donne’s wide knowledge of life is especially evi dent in his prose writings, says Evelyn Simpson, and she describes his sermons as "full of the ripe wisdom of experience gathered in many difficult walks of life,"-*-® Even at a time of great personal grief, Donne makes use of a proverb. Miss

Simpson notes that in the Easter sermon which he preached after the death'of his daughter Lucy, Donne says:

He was but a heathen that said, If God love a man> Juvenis tollitur, He fakes him young out of this world^TS We know also that proverbs were a frequent topic for trial subjects in the education of young men for the church, and that Donne and Jeremy Taylor attempted exercise themes on the same proverbs used by Aphthonius when he was a schoolmate of St. John Chrysostom’s (3ll.5’?-l|07 A.D.).^ Even if he had never written poetry, then, Donne would still have found

1®Ibid. , p. \\$. 1^Ibid. , p. h-3 -

-*-®A Study of the Prose Works of John Donne, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1%2) , p . 6 ?. -*~^LXX Sermons, no. 22, "Preached at S. Pauls, upon Easterday, 1627,'' quoted by Simpson, p. 267*

^Habenicht, p. 11. 23 many uses for proverbs as a preacher.

The young John Donne was, we know, a "great fre quenter of playes,"2^- and thus he was exposed to another strong oral influence toward using proverbs, which had long been a popular device of the playwright's. Proverbs abound in the medieval and Elizabethan drama. B. J. Whiting, in

Proverbs In the Earlier English Drama, examines the Biblical plays, moralities, interludes, and early comedies and tragedies, tracing an unbroken line of usage from before lij.00 to after

1 6 0 0 . Whiting finds that the authors of the religious plays, contrary to what one might expect, used proverbs not for instruction but rather "to enliven the dialogue in the comic scenes in an effort, perhaps, to give it realism."22 Comic characters are, in fact, "singled out by their use of pro verbs ."23 Because proverbs appeal to the ear, they "fit most convincingly into dialogue, and it is not surprising to find them used freely in the drama. We should not be sur prised either to find Donne using them freely in many of his dramatic lyrics, where they help to characterize the speaker.

The chief point- of Whiting's study is that:

. . . the use of proverbs had been convention alized before the English drama developed into

^ S i r Richard Baker, Chronicles of the Kings of England, l61|3, p. quoted by Helen Gardner, The Elegies ana the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne (Oxford, 19&£), p. xx i i i.

^Whiting, p. I|-.

23lbid,, p. h-

2^ I bid., p . x . 2l| its most characteristic forms and that the popu larity of homely sayings at the height of the Elizabethan period was no more than a continua tion along familiar paths.2^

The value of such knowledge is pointed out by Hereward T,

Price in his discussion of Webster’s imagery. He says that

we must train ourselves to recognize proverbs which were

part of a stock of imagery common to all Elizabethan drama.

As Price says:

Many figures that appear to be brilliant inventions turn out on inspection to be old proverbs. When Bosola says: "Thou sleep'st worse, then if a mouse should be forc'd to take up her lodging in a cat's eare" (Duchess of Malfi, IV, ii, 135>-136), he appears to have hit upon a striking figure. In reality he is only employing a proverb well known to the Elizabethans. They would approve of the passage because Webster gave to an old saw a novel application.26

The Elizabethan love of punning was expressed through proverbs,

where the pun was in the literal interpretation of a proverb.

Many plays had proverbial titles, such as Fast Bind Fast Find;

Hot Anger soon Cold; 'Tls good sleeping in a Whole Skin;

- Measure- for Measure; and The White Devil. ^ Donne also, like

the Elizabethan dramatists, gives novel applications to old

proverbs and uses them for titles. He might have learned of

these uses without reading a word, but simply by frequenting

the plays, as he did.

2 Whiting, pp. x-xi.

^k"The Function of Imagery in Webster,” Elizabethan Drama: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Ralph J. Kaufmann (Wew YorE,- 19'5T)pT^'2t".

^^See Heseltine, p. xv, and Price, p. 228. 25 For a comprehensive knowledge of every kind of pro verb, however, he needed to attend no plays other than those of Shakespeare, whose work, according to Tilley, sums up the p O Elizabethan attitude toward proverbs. "The dramatist

Heywood," Tilley says, "resembles him /Shakespeare/ in his use of the linked proverb," and "Webster comes near to him in skillful allusiveness," but no writer matches Shakespeare's 29 c omprehens ive knowledge.

The proverbs in Shakespeare have been studied in some detail. They have been collected, explicated, and 30 traced to possible sources. There has been, however little detailed analysis of their functions in particular plays. Donne might have learned much from Shakespeare’s practice. Tilley outlines five main uses of proverbs by

Shakespeare, and we will see that each of these uses can be found in .Donne, a fact which supports Tilley's statement that

"what is true of Sheakespeare will be found to apply to two centuries of English 1 iterature,"31 that is, to the litera ture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Following are five uses of proverbs by Shakespeare as described by

Tilley.32 First, the proverb is sometimes distorted to achieve a comic effect. For example, "As dead as a herring" becomes

"By gar, de herring is no dead so as I will kill him" (Merry

28Tilley, p. viii. 2 9 Ibid., p. viii.

30Supra, "Introduction," note 17.

3^Tilley, p. viii. 3 2 Ibid., pp. vii-viii. 26 Wives of Windsor II,iii,12).

Second, the same proverb is shaped for different effects. The proverb "A red morning foretells a stormy day" is treated thus in Richard the Second:

See, see, King Richard doth himself appear, A 3 doth the blushing discontented sun Prom out the fiery portal of the east, When he perceives the envious clouds are bent To dim his glory and to stain the track Of his bright passage to the Occident. (III,iii,62)

But in the First Part of Henry the Fourth, V,i,l, the same proverb becomes:

How bloodily the sun begins to peer Above yon busky hill I The day looks paJLe At his distemperature.

Third, a proverb is often expanded, as "Make hay while the sun shines" is:

The sun shines hot, and if we use delay, Cold biting winter mars our hop'd-for hay. (Third Part of Henry the Sixth, IV,viii,60-6l)

Fourth, Shakespeare sometimes "merely glances at a proverb, giving us a splinter of it or a slight floating alius ion.Tilley remarks that "for the Renaissance such dexterously evasive hints constituted one of the chief beauties of style.He illustrates the effect by calling attention to the way the proverb, "It is too late to call again yesterday," is woven into Salisbury's words:

One day too late, I fear me, noble lord, Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth. 0 , call back yesterday, bid time return, And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men! (Richard the Second,III,ii,67-70)

33Tilley, p. vii. 3^-Ibid. , p. vii. 27 Finally, there is the long string of proverbs which

Tilley credits to an Elizabethan delight in exuberance.3£

Sometimes the list of proverbs is used to give authority to the speaker, as in Richard the Second,II,i,31-39, where the dying John of Gaunt says:

Methinks I am a prophet new-inspired And thus expiring do foretell of him. His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves-- Small 3howers last long, but sudden storms are short. He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes. With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder. Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

At other times, the same device is used to characterize a speaker who does not seem to be wise because of the hackneyed proverbs he uses. The speech of Polonius to Laertes (Hamlet, I, iii,5>9-80) is a famous example of this usage.

Since the proverb is naturally suited for dramatic dialogue, it would seem that the dramatists did much to keep the proverb from becoming simply an ornamental device.

In Shakespeare, as the examples cited by Tilley indicate, the proverb is part of a speech in a dramatic situation, suited to the character and the occasion. In contrast to the influence of the dramatists, especially Shakespeare, on the organic use of proverbs are the rhetoricians, who most often regarded the proverb as a detachable element of style, an ornament. Since the rhetoricians had a strong influence on the literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,37 the

3^Tilley, p. vii. 3 6 ^ ^ ^ p> x>

3^Donald L. Clark, Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance (New York, 1963), pp. lfcO-161. 28 treatment of the proverb by the rhetoricians needs to be considered. But before we examine these aspects of the proverb tradition, a glance at the role of the proverb in the Renaissance grammar schools will provide a background for the influence of the rhetoricians.

The child in the English Renaissance could have learned proverbs in a number of ways, apart from the family or the pulpit: from books of maxims and counsels, from courtesy books, or from elementary Latin texts. In grammar school his knowledge of proverbs was developed by his study of Latin grammar, where proverbs were used for both trans lation and composition, and by exercise books and colloquial glosses.Smith presents the parallels between the pro verbial material in Shakespeare and that in two books known to medieval and renaissance schoolboys, the Sententiae

Pueriles of Leonard Culman and the Sentent iae of Publius 'J o Syrus.J '

The theories regarding the use of proverbs were based on Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, and had been expressed in several exercise books which were in use through out the Middle Ages and well into the seventeenth century.

The most popular text in the Renaissance was a fourth century one by Aphthonius. Habenicht summarizes Aphthoniusf ,treat ment of the proverb:

In Aphthonius the proverb, one of fourteen several "topics" suitable for developing a theme, is defined as "a summary saying, in a statement

-’^Habenicht, p. 8. -^Smith, pp. 29 of general application, dissuading from some thing or persuading toward something, or showing what is the nature of each.'1 Proverbs are said to be true, plausible, simple, compound, or hyper bolic; and as topics for themes they may be worked out in this way: a brief encomium of him who made the saying followed by direct exposi tion, proof, contrast, enthymeme, illustration, example, and authority. The fourteen elementary topics with their model themes were recommended for use in several grammar schools during the sixteenth century, and in 1563 the text of Aphthonius was adapted into English by Richard Rainolde as A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetor ike . ^-0

Other texts were used, such as Richard Sherry’s A treatise of schemes and tropes (1 5 5 0 ), which is based on an earlier compilation of rhetorical f igures The proverb was pre sented to the student not only as a topic for a theme, but as an authority or witness, and as an ornament.^2 As Donald

L. Clark says, the Renaissance rhetoricians continued the medieval notion that rhetoric was concerned mainly with style, and since inventlo and dispos it io of classical rhetoric were considered part of logic, rhetoric became mainly elocutio and pronuntiatio. He takes Sherry's work as typical in his definition of elocut io as the dressing up of thought.^

One of the earliest and most popular textbooks of rhetoric in English was Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique

(1553). This work, went through six editions in fifteen years and "was probably studied by every young writer of the day."^ Wilson repeats the uses of proverbs favored by the

^°Habenic.ht, p. 77. ^ Ibid., p. 12.

^-2 Ibid., p. 1 2 . ^-3ciark, pp. 58-59.

^-I-Heselt ine, p. xiv. 30 medieval rhetoricians: emphasis, amplification, adornment, and embellishment. For example, Wilson says:

Agayne, sentences gathered and heaped together commende muche the matter. As if one shoulde say: Revengemente belungeth to God alone, and thereby exhorte manne to patience: He myghte brynge in these sentences with him and geve greate cause of muche matter. No man is hurte but of himselff, that is to say: adversitie or wronge sufferings is no harme to him that hathe a constaunt harte, and lives upright in all his doynges.^

Wilson also recommends the use of proverbs in The Rule of

Reason, Conteinyng the Arte of Logique.^-^ Another rhetori cian, Henry Peacham, discusses the proverb in The Garden of

Eloquence (1577) with an enthusiasm considered typical of the Renaissance:

Amongst all the excellent forms of speech there are none other more briefe, more signifi cant, more evident or more excellent, than apt Prouerbs: for what figure of speech is more fit to teach, more forcible to persuade, more wise to forewarn, more sharpe to reproue, more strong to confirme or more piercing to imprint. Briefly, they are most profitable, and most pleasant, & may well be called, the Summaries of maners, or, the Images of human life: for in them there is contained a generall doctrine of direction, and. particular rules for all duties in all p e r s o n s . ^7

The rhetoricians, as these passages indicate, were interested in the proverb primarily for the weight that it could lend to an argument. They encouraged an interest in the proverb, xhiich interest became manifest in the late

^The Arte of Rhetorique (1553)* Facsimile Reproduc tion (Gainesville, Florida”, 196?), Folio 65, p. llj.1.

London, l55l)* Folio 36. Cited by Mauch, p. 108.

^William G. Crane, ed. (Gainesville, Florida, 195b) > p. 30. Quoted by Mauch, pp. 88-8 9 . 31 sixteenth century by an increasing number of proverb collec tions.

In the Arte of Rhetorique, Wilson acknowledges the value of a collection:

But what nede I heape all these /proverbs/ together, seynge Hewoodes Proverbes are in prynte, where plentye are to be hadde: whose paynes in that behalfe, are worthye immortall prayse. 48

Heywood's Dialogue of Proverbs was the second collection of

English proverbs, following Nicholas Udall's Apothegmes

(1542). In the mid-sixteenth century the interest in proverbs for their own sake was at a peak. Both of these works were translations in part of a collection by Erasmus published in

1500. This work, known in its mature form as the Adagiorum

Chiliades, had an enormous influence on the interest in proverbs. It was a compilation of more than 4*000 items, with each item explained. Like the later collections, it was a handy reference work for the schoolboy, the university student, the letter writer, and the versifier.

A brief description of some of the more important collections of proverbs to be published in England in the years 1500-1700, many within Donne's own lifetime (1472-

1 6 3 1 ), will indicate how intense was the interest. In 1614* a collection based on Heywood was published by William

Camden. This collection of about four hundred proverbs was enlarged in the edition of 1623 and again in the editions

^ The Art of Rhetorique, Folio 66, p. 143.

^Habenicht, pp. 17-18-. of 1629 and 1 6 3 6 . The interest of the clergy was reflected

in the work of an English clergyman, Thomas Draxe, who pub

lished in 1612, a Collection of Proper, Choice and Elegant

Latin Words and Phrases, and in 1616, Bibliotheca Scholastica

Instruct isslma Or, A Treasurie of Ancient Adagles, and sen

tentious Proverbes (1616), containing over two thousand pro

verbs listed under subject headings. Another clergyman, John

Clark, produced his Paroemiologia in 1639, a collection of proverbs intended for the grammar schools. Finally, there was George Herbert's Outlandish Proverbs, published post humously in 161+0 , and expanded by another editor for a second

edition in l65l under the title Jacula Prudentium. There were many other important collections of proverbs in languages

other than English, such as John F.lorio's First and Second

Fruits (1578 and 1.591), which were dialogues written to

introduce to Englishmen the proverbs beyond the Alps.^0

Apart from the schools, the rhetoricians, and the

collectors, there was one other important source for Donne's

knowledge of proverbs. This was nondramatic literature.

From his reading of this literature, Donne could have learned

much about the use of proverbs, but he would have learned

nothing, I think, which would fully account for his own use

of proverbs. Donne, like Shakespeare, tends to be quite

flexible in his use of proverbs. Unlike Donne and Shake-

5osee Heseltine, p. xiii, and Lievsay for a brief description of collections, Tilley drew upon the Renaissance collections for his Dictionary and has a full listing in his bibliography. 33 speare, many other writers tended to use proverbs mechani cally, as didactic tools or stylistic ornaments.

Proverbs, as Taylor says, although used differently in every age, appear frequently in writings which appeal to the folk, and rarely in those types of literature far removed from the folk.^-*- The medieval German court epic, for example, a "relatively artificial and cultured product, shows a disin clination" for proverbs.The distinction cannot be made too definite, however, for Chaucer's sophisticated and anti- popular Troilus is full of them.^3

Chaucer can be regarded as the medieval master of proverbs, just as Shakespeare is the Renaissance master.

Proverbs appeared frequently in medieval nondramatic litera ture, in works like the Ancren Riwle, in the poetry of Gower and Lydgate.^ Chaucer used proverbs in the way his contem poraries used them, as he does in the tale of Melibee. In response to the host's criticism of "Sir Thopas," the charac ter Chaucer offers to tell a "moral tale vertuous," adding: Therefore, lordynges alle, I yow biseche, If that you thynke I varie as in my speche, As thus, though that I telle somewhat moore Of proverbes than ye han herd bifoore Comprehended in this litel tretys heere, To enforce with th' effect of my mateere.55

But Chaucer's use of proverbs was not bound by the practice of his contemporaries or by the medieval rhetoricians. B. J.

^ The Proverb, pp. 171-172. ^2 Ibid., pp. 171-172.

id. , p. 1 7 2 . ^ S e e Heseltine, pp. ix-xi.

^ The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. P.N. Robinson (Boston, 1957)> 2nd ed. , p~. T5/! 3b Whiting studied Chaucer's use of proverbs and concluded that:

No other poet of repute ha3 made so consider able a use of proverbial material as Chaucer, and no one else ever used it so skillfully and effec tively. He used proverbs to heighten character ization: the wise saws of Pandarus are as much a part of that engaging and abused companion of Troilus as are his courage and unfailing humor. Chaucer used proverbs to cap a climax, to empha size a situation; he used them seriously and he used them humorously. He made them a part of his style. . . .56

Whiting's comments on Chaucer's knowledge of the rhetoricians

are useful in determining Donne's relationship to the rhe

toricians. Chaucer often begins or ends a literary unit with a proverb, a practice recommended by the rhetoricians.

But to argue that Chaucer took the precept from the rhetori

cians is another matter. Whiting's opinion is that Chaucer might have been influenced by Deschamps and the fabliaux writers. Chaucer knew the precepts of the rhetoricians, but he could burlesque them, and it is his sense of humor that makes Whiting doubt the rhetoricians had a strong i n f l u e n c e . ^7

Likewise, Donne most probably knew the rhetoricians of his

day, but he may not have been influenced strongly by them.

He might have learned from Chaucer a skill and effectiveness

closer to Shakespeare's than to the mechanism of those who

followed the rhetoricians slavishly.

The early Tudor writers continued the practices of

the medieval writers, and sixteenth century rhetoricians

encouraged the use of proverbs. A recent study by Thomas

56Chaucer's Use of Proverbs {Cambridge, 193^4-)> p.viii.

57ibid., p. viii. 3£ Mauch lists the proverbial material in six major early Tudor writers: Barclay,, Skelton, Wyatt, Tyndale, More, and Hall.

After examining the works of Skelton and More in some detail,

Mauch concludes that both writers follow the precepts of the rhetoricians, but not slavishly. Like the medieval writers, they use the proverbs as a form of authority, as a moral admonition without straightforward didacticism, and for beginning and ending a work. Both show superiority in using a proverb as a tool of satire.^®

In contrast to the functional use of proverbs in satire stands the proverb used simply as an ornament, as it is in the prose of John Lyly. Lyly studs the pages of Euphues with proverbial gems, exaggerating the fondness of the age for fanciful and ornate language.^ It was once thought that

Lyly’s use of proverbs as an ornamental stylistic device was based on Pettie's Petite Pallace, but Lievsay suggests that both Lyly and Pettie may have been influenced by Stefano

G-uazzo's La Civil conversat ione . 60 The fact that a large number of Guazzian proverbs occur in Euphues reminds us that- there was an international interest In proverbs at the time.

One of the few references to Spanish vernacular literature in

Donne's work, for example, is to a proverb. Miss Simpson points out that in one letter, Donne writes, "The Spanish proverb infornes me, that he is a fool i\Thich cannot make one

-^Mauch, pp. 229-2 3 0 . 90 60 ^ 7Heseltine, p. xiv. Lievsay, p. 7 9 . 36 - ZL*j Sonnet, and he is mad which makes two."

Donne may have learned some proverbs from Lyly, but he seems to have been little interested in Lyly’s treatment of the proverb as an ornamental device. Donne’s uses, as we shall see, are seldom if ever mechanical. Two poets who

Xirere Donne’s contemporaries are, like Lyly, in contrast to

Donne in their use of proverbs. In I6OJ4. Anthony Sherley '' published Witts New Dyall: Or, a Schollers Gaze, a work con sisting of poems on general and moral topics, such as "Of

God," "Of Christ," "Of Truth," "Of Prayer," "Of Vice," "Of

Pride." The verse has been described as a kind of wretched anticipation of the metaphysical. The poems are essenti ally versified commonplaces:

Mariage is God’s Indenture which he drawes Twixt Man and Woman: tis life’s Obligation; It is Loues Piller: tis the Chayne of Laws; Tis the good evill, the bitter delectation.

Wedlockes hell, is when the husband throwes His frounes, his brawles, his curses, and his blowes, On his Wiues head: yet spendes the amourus charmes Of smiles and kisses In a strumpets armes.63

Verse of this type, written whan Donne was a young man, in no way prepares us for the way Donne handles commonplaces or proverbs. Neither does the following poem by Michael Drayton

(1563-1631). Drayton's entire sonnet is made up of proverbs, but the mechanical artificial quality of the dialogue is unlike anything in Donne:

^ A Study of the Prose Works, p. i+8 , note 3. / O Lievsay, p. 207.

63ibjd., p. 207- 37 Sonnet £8 from Idea to Proverb©

As Loue and I, late harbour'd In one Inne, With Proverbs thus each other intertaine; In loue there Is no lacke, thus I beglnne? Paire words makes fooles, replieth he againe? That spares to speake, doth spare to speed (quoth I) As well (saith he) too forward as too slow.. Fortune assists the boldest, I replie? A hasty man (quoth he) nere wanted woe. Labour is light, where loue (quoth I) doth pay, (Saith he) light burthens heavy, if farre borne? (Quoth I) the maine lost, cast the by away: You have spunne a fa ire thred, he replies in scorne, And having thus a while each other thwarted, /i Pooles as we met, so fooles againe we parted.

Drayton's tour de force can serve as a contemporary contrast to Donne in the use made of proverbs. Drayton's poem Is much closer to Lyly's prose than to Shakespeare's dramatic verse in that the proverbs, although unified by their application to love, are strung together in somewhat mechanical fashion. Donne seldom uses proverbs so mechani cally. What characterizes his use of proverbs, especially, is their functioning as integral parts of a larger whole.

Sometimes the proverbs help to develop the character of the speaker, and sometimes they are used to conclude an argument.

Often the proverb is present only in an oblique reference, and at other times the idea or the imagery of the proverb is developed at length. Donne's use of proverbs exhibits the control, the r naturalness, the variety, and the subtlety that one finds

in Chaucer and Shakespeare rather than the artificiality that strikes the reader of Euphues or of Drayton's sonnet.

k^-Minor Poems of Michael Drayton, ed. Cyril Brett (Oxford, 1907)j p. k5 • 38 Part of the reason for this distinction is, no doubt, Donne’s

own artistic genius. Part of the reason, too, might be that

Donne learned much of his usage from the living drama, where

the proverb was a natural component of dialogue.

Donne’s place in the tradition, then, is in a small group apart from the larger group of writers who used the proverb primarily as an ornament. Since Donne comes at the very end of a period when the interest in proverbs was intense,

and just before the decline of that interest, he could be

described as the last great artist to use proverbs in poetry.

Following him, there are no poets of any significance who use proverbs. In fact, there are few writers in the eight eenth century who use them at allj it is during this time that the proverb is frowned upon in polite circles.^ There

is some revival of interest in the nineteenth-century novel

ists, especially in Dickens and Trollope, but no poet of

significance that I know of uses them again. Donne is, then,

in a real sense, at the end of a tradition. In nondramatic

poetr;/ he is the fine flower of that tradition, comparable

in his artistry only to Shakespeare.

In the next three chapters I have analyzed three main functions of proverbs for Donne. Although each of these functions--allusion, amplification, and authority--is

recommended by the rhetoricians, each can also be found in

Shakespeare. The terms are useful for analysis, regardless

^ S e e Keseltine, pp. xvii-xx, and Tilley, p. vii, for brief discussions of the decline in interest in proverbs. of where Donne learned the usage. In the discussion of each

of these uses, other functions of proverbs will be treated when I am discussing entire poems, such as "The Canonization.

These three uses are by no means the only ones that might be

discussed, but they seemed to me, after analysis of the

material in Part II, to be the most representative. bo Chapter II

PROVERBS USED FOR ALLUSION

Studies of Donne's imagery usually emphasize its peculiar qualities, perhaps taking their direction from Dr. Johnson's emphasis on ,fthe most heterogeneous ideas . . . yoked by violence together.Tr^ The conventional aspects of

Donne’s style, particularly if he Is viewed only in relation to the Petrarchan tradition, do not receive much attention because they do not seem to merit it. The following con clusion, reached by Milton A. Rugoff after a detailed study of Donne’s imagery, is rather typical in its stress on

Donne's uniqueness:

The final picture with which our study of Donne leaves us is of a writer who forsook for the most part the accepted poetic beauties and the romantic overtones of traditional imagery-- particularly those of classical mythology and the world of nature; who forsook the charm—of both the simple and the sensuous, leaving the first for poets like Herrick and the second for those like Keats, conscious that his own function lay elsewhere; who forsook, though much less completely, the warmth and humanity of the familiar and the common, finding more attractive that which lay beneath them, and who gave up, finally, loveliness in general, because above all he worshipped sense and intellectual meaning-- those same gods to whom he had sacrificed smooth metre and liquid rhythm.2

^■"The Life of Abraham Cowley," Lives of the English Poets, ed. Warren L. Fleischauer (Chicago', l9bl+), p3 27

^Donne' s Imagery (New York, 1939), p. 2i|i|., kl It is easy to think of Donne only in terms of what he had

forsaken, because that is so striking. But once one is

aware of the extent to which Donne used proverbs, it is

difficult to speak at all of his giving up the ''warmth and

humanity of the familiar and the common." Donne depended heavily on the familiar and the common when he used proverbs, but often the proverb is partially hidden in an allusion.

Donne alludes to a proverb, usually, in one of two

ways. The first way is quite direct, and it consists of

Donne’s employing a conventional metaphor such as "Life is a

pilgrimage" (128).^ There is nothing particularly xjitty

or exciting about the use of such a proverbial expression, but we must admit that many such "familiar" images occur in

Donne. The second method is more interesting because it is more subtle. The proverb is hinted at quite obliquely, and,

if the reader recognizes the allusion, the meaning of the

passage Is clarified. If he does not recognize the proverb,

he may miss the full meaning of the passage, or, at worst,

regard it as obscure. Tilley Informs us that "for the

Renaissance such dextrously evasive hints constituted one of

the chief beauties of style.Take, for example, these

lines from "The Second Anniversary":

^The number in parentheses corresponds to the numbering of proverbs in Part II.

^Dictlonary, p . vii. lf-2 And shee made peace, for no peace is like this, That beauty and chastity together kisse:5 (Manley, p. 103, lines 363-61+) The force of the compliment depends on the reader's recog nizing the allusion to the proverb, "Beauty and chastity seldom meet" (12). He then realizes that Donne is deliberate ly contrasting Elizabeth with the popular saying about beautiful women. In a recent edition of the poem, Prank

Manley directs the reader to Psalm 85:10: "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other," which is less relevant here, I think, than the proverb.

Manley says that the "paradox of chaste beauty was a common place that had appealed to Donne b e f o r e , but if we do not recognize it as proverbial we are not sensitive to the immediate response the allusion would have drawn from Donne's c ontemporar ie s.

Sometimes a passage will strike the modern reader as obscure, and the tendency may be to exaggerate the obscurity found in Donne by his contemporaries. For example, the twentieth-century reader is likely to regard as somewhat obscure these lines from Stanza XXVIII of "The Progresse of the Soule":

Exalted she’is, but to the exalters good, As are by great ones, men which lowly stood. It's rais'd, to be the Raisers instrument and food.

^For the text of the Anniversaries I have followed John Donne: The Anniversaries, ed. Frank Manley (Baltimore, 1963). Future references are to this edition, which will hereafter be referred to as Manley, and will be included in the text.

6Ibid., pp. 193-191+. b3 The contemporary of Donne, however, would probably have under stood these lines in the light of the proverb, "The great put the little on the hook" (1 0 0 ), which seems to be alluded to here. Grierson, although he does not cite the proverb, remarks that the line is to be taken as an "aphorism" in this sense: "To be exalted is often to become the instrument and prey of him who has exalted you."'

Donne's use of conventional simile and metaphor can be seen clearly in "Holy Sonnet VI," which is a tissue of proverbial expressions:

This is my playes last scene, here heavens appoint My pilgrimages last mile; and my race Idly, yet quickly runna, hath this last pace, My spans last inch, my minutes latest point.8

In these first four lines, Donne has drawn most of his

Imagery from proverbs: "This world is a stage and every man plays his part" (265); "Life is a pilgrimage" (128); and

"Life is a span" (129). Perhaps Donne is also thinking of the proverb, "The first Minute after noon is night" (17U) in "my minutes latest point." In the next two lines,

And gluttonous death, will instantly unjoynt My body , and soule, and I shall sleep a space. (Grierson, I, 32l|, lines 5-8)

7fhe Poems of John Donne, ed. Herbert J. C. Grierson (London, 1912)," I, 308, lines 278-280. This edition will be referred to hereafter as Grierson and references will be included in the text. V D John Donne: The Divine Poems, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford, 1952), p. ?, lines 1—iq. This text will be referred to hereafter as Gardner, DP, and references to the poems will be included In the text. u u Donne seems to be alluding to the proverb, "Sleep is the image of death" (2 1 2 ), only here he is reversing the terms.

The concluding line of the poem, "For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devill," is simply the proverbial statement (2 6 7 ) of the conventional images for the tempta tions which the Christian faces.

Sometimes, especially in the longer poems, Donne uses the same conventional metaphor more than once. For example, "The body is the prison of the soul" (22) appears twice in "The Second Anniversary":

Thinke in how poore a prison thou didst be After, enabled but to sucke and crie. (Manley, p. 96, lines 173-U)

Shee, whose faire body no such prison was, . . . (Manley, p. 98, line 221)

This same proverbial imagery is used three times in "The

Progresse of the Soule":

This soule to whom Luther, and Mahomet were Prisons of flesh; . . . (Grierson, I, 297, lines 66-67)

Mow swome a prison in a prison put, And now the Soule in double xvalls was shut, Till melted with the Swans digestive fire, She left her house the fish, and vapour’d forth; (Lines 2l|.l-2l|2)

This Soule, now free from prison, and passion, . . . (Line 371)

This conception of the body as imprisoning the soul might

be traced to Plato, who uses it in the Phaedo and elsewhere,

or to one of the Cambridge Platonists, such as John Smith,

who expresses in his Discourses the same view of the" soul-

body relationship. He says the good life is the effort U5 " , . . more and more to withdraw ourselves from these

Bodily things, to set our soul as free as may he from its miserable slavery to this base flesh."^ But, since the imagery had appeared as early as 1581+ in John Lyly’s Campaspe , ^ and was apparently conventional, it would seem safer to find

Donne’s source in the language of his day rather than in a more remote source. There are a number of these popular' similes in Donne's poetry, such as: as dry as a bone (2 3 ); as hard as a stone (2 2 1 ); as black as jet (1 1 5 ); as white as

ivory (1 1 4 ); as straight as a cedar (2 7 ); as black as hell

(1 0 6 ); as changeable as a chameleon (3 0 ); as slow as a snail

(2 1 4 ); as mute as a fish (7 8 ); as swift as lightening (1 3 1 ); as lustful as sparrows (2l8 ); as lecherous as a goat (91); to quake like an aspen leaf (126).

The other form of allusion which I have distinguished, which is perhaps more properly allusion because it is more covert than the first, is used extensively by Donne. The technique is to glance at a proverb, to give us, as Tilley describes Shakespeare’s method, "a splinter of it or a slight floating alius ion.The proverb is usually woven closely

into the texture of the poetry, requiring an exercise of

some wit on the part of the poet and calling for an equal exercise of wit by the reader, or at least for a knowledge

' ^Quoted by Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (New York, 1931+)* pp. 145-11+6.

103ee Tilley, B497.

•’■^Dictionary, p. vii. 1+6 of the proverb. To indicate how carefully Donne fits indi vidual proverbs into the whole poem, I shall examine in greater detail two of his secular poems, "His Parting from

Her" and "The Canonization," and several of the_Holy Sonnets.

The way in which Donne can fit several proverbs into one poem is illustrated by Elegy XII, "His Parting from

Her,which contains more or less oblique references to sixteen different proverbs. Of the sixteen, three are con cerned with the general character of love and fortune, apart from the particular love. The fact that "Love is blind" (ll+l), for example, is introduced early in the poem:

Oh Love, that fire and darkness should be mixt,■ Or to thy triumphs soe strange torments fixt? Is't because thou thy self art blind, that wee Thy Martyrs must no more each other see? (Gardner, ESS, p. 97» lines 13 - 16 ) '

12 In her recent edition, The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets (Oxford, 1965)* Miss Helen Gardner places this poem among the "Dubia." There are, she says, no strong grounds for attributing the poem to Donne on the evidence of the manuscripts, and she argues that the internal evi dence is strongly against accepting it as authentic (pp. xli- xliii). In effect, she says it i3 too poor a poem to be assigned to Donne. She is in direct opposition to Grierson, who argue3 that it "is so fine a poem that it is difficult to think that any unknown poet could have written it" (II, cxxxvi-cxxxvii). I have included the poem, fully aware that there is disagreement among the editors, and that it may not by authentic. I should add, however, that the technique of using proverbs in the poem is not strikingly different from the technique In other poems by Donne, although there Is a proportionately larger number in this poem. If it is not Donne's, then it illustrates the same techniques used by one of Donne's contemporaries. The work will be referred to as Gardner, ESS, and the references will be included in the text. ^7 A similar proverb, "Fortune (Justice) is blind" (82), is alluded to twice. The first time it is joined with an allu sion to another proverb, "Great Fortune brings with it great misfortune" (8i|), in these lines:

So blinded Justice doth, when Favorites fall, Strike them, their house, their followers all. (Lines 33~3k) The second example is a good illustration of how Donne trans mutes the common form of the proverb with his wit:

Till Fortune, that would rive us, with the deed Strain her eyes open, and it make them bleed. (Lines 61-62)

There are several other proverbs alluded to in this poem, most of them referring to love. A simple listing of the proverbs and the relevant lines will illustrate how heavily Donne has drawn upon proverbs in this poem:

1. As innocent (harmless) as a Dove (56) As loving (tame, patient) as a Dove (pigeon) (58) Love is blind (ll+l)

Yet Love, thou'rt Blinder then thy self in this, To vex my Dove-like friend for mine amiss: (Lines 29-30) . _

2. As lost as a Drop of "water in the sea (57) ■

Or as I'had watcht one drop in a vaststream, And I left wealthy only in a dream. (Lines 27-28)

3. Love is full of fear (trouble) (li|.2)

Or have we left undone some mutual Rite, Through holy fear, that merits thy despight? (Lines 19-20)

U. Love will find a way (150)

And we can love by letters still and gifts, And thoughts and dreams; Love never wanteth shifts. (Lines 71-72) 1)8 5. Love Is sweet in the beginning but sour In the ending ( 1 W Time shall not lose our passages: the Spring Shall tell how fresh our love was in the beginning; The Summer how it ripened in the eare; And Autumn, what our golden harvests were. The Winter I’ll not think on to spite thee, But count it a lost season, so shall shee. (Lines 77-82)

6 . After Wight comes the day (180)

And dearest Friend, since we must part, drown night With hope of Day, burthens well born are light. (Lines 83-81|)

7. The Sun shines upon all alike (227)

Though cold and darkness longer hang somewhere, Yet Phoebus equally lights all the Sphere. (Lines 85-86)

8 . Fortune (Woman) is constant only in inconstancy (8 3 )

Be then ever your self, and let no woe Win on your health, your youth, your beauty: so Declare your self base fortunes Enemy, Wo less by your contempt than constancy: (Lines 89-92)

9 . Say well is good but do well is better (201)

For this to thTcomfort of my Dear I vow, My Deeds shall still be what my words are now; (Lines 95-96)

10. Few Words show men wise (263) Where many words are, the truth goes by (263) Full of courtesy, full of craft (263)

Much more I could, but many words have made That, oft, suspected which men would persuade; (Lines 101-102)

Thus, in a poem of 10i| lines, Donne has alluded to sixteen proverbs, one of them, "Fortune is blind" (82), being used

twice. There are several other proverbs in the poem which will be discussed under one of the other uses or will appear

in Part II. 1+9 An awareness that Donne is alluding to a proverb can be an invaluable aid in explication. I do not wish to sug gest that a mere identification of a particular phrase or line as proverbial somehow invalidates other interpretations of the passage which do not recognize the proverb. But the presence of the proverb tells us not only something about

Donne’s source, something about his originality, and some thing about his audience; the proverb can be a very useful tool in reaching a full understanding of his meaning. His poem, "The Canonization," for example, has provoked an enormous amount of criticism, and, although Donne uses several proverbs in the poem, this fact has been recognized by no commentator, to my knowledge. Take, for example, the third stanza:

Call us what you will, wee’are made such by love; Call her one, mee another flye, W e ’are Tapers too, and at our owne cost die. And wee in us finde the*Eagle and the Dove: The Phoenix ridle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it So, to one neutrall thing both sexes fit. Wee dye and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love. (Gardner, ESS, p. 7k t lines 19-27) A commentary which s6ems rather typical is that of Doniphan

Louthan: The speaker anticipates (in fancy) one term of invective which might be used: the couple as flies (i.e., either nobodies without ambition or common lechers). Developing his reply by the association of ideas, the speaker comment^: We're not only taper flies fatally attracted by the flame, we're tapers as well. It's no skin off your nose: we die at our own cost. /The taper's burning consumes itself and nothing else; the lovers die gradually by inter course, each instance of which deducts a day from 5o

their lives--but nobody else is implicated./ We find in us the eagle and the dove /symbols here of the aggressive and the submissive; perhaps the Eagle and the Dove, like the Ram and the Lamb, point to polar manifestations of God's nature . . . ; Edgar PI. Duncan has noted that, in alchemical terms, the "eagle" and the "dove" are instrumental in the rise of the "phoenix."/ As Mr. Brooks notes, the flaming tapers and the birds merge at this point into the fabulous phoenix, a flaming bird which rises from its own ashe3 . The enigma of the phoenix makes more sense if the bird is taken as a symbol of unity in love. In a way, the phoenix-before and the phoenix-after constitute two beings in one--and so do lovers.13

This is a useful and suggestive commentary. What I wish to point out, however, is that several things that could be said,- if the commentator were aware of the.proverbs being used, have not been said.

First of all, very little of the imagery in the stanza is original with Donne, although the usual commentary might lead one to think so. Pour proverbs, I believe, supply the primary images: "The Fly (moth) that plays too long in the candle singes its wings at last" (79); "A Candle (torch) lights others and consumes itself" (25); "An Eagle does not hatch a dove" (59); "As rare as the Phoenix" (186). Donne fuses the images and ideas in these proverbs into something new, but he had the proverbs at hand and must have expected the contemporary reader to recognize this.

1 0 JThe Poetry of John Donne: A Study in Explication (New York, 1951)? p~- Xl3• In "'The Canonization’: The Language of Paradox Reconsidered," ELH, xxiii, 36~b7, William J. Rooney stresses the conventional character of the figures and images in the poem, although he does not cite the proverbs. The speaker of the poem, defending himself against

criticism, says that he and his lover have been made into

something new by love. The speaker's comparison of himself

and his lover to a fly playing about a candle until it singes

its wings suggests the early stages of their love: both lovers

can be called flies in the sense that they played long enough

about the flame of love to get burned. Their relationship was at first, perhaps, only a flirtation. The speaker then

says that the chiding friend can call them tapers. A taper,

as Louthan points out, consumes itself and nothing else, and

thus the image continues the theme of the first stanza:

"Alas, alas, who's injur’d by my love?" But the allusion to

the proverb, "A candle lights others and consumes itself"

adds another note, that of mutual giving. The flame cf love

in each lover feeds the flame in the other. They die gradu

ally, perhaps by sexual intercourse, as Louthan suggests.

But they die, also, in that the separate selves, flies or

tapers, are consumed, but the consumption produces a new and unique being. It is the uniqueness of their love which the

speaker is stressing, I believe, by his allusion to the

proverbs concerning the Eagle and the Dove, and the Phoenix,

It would seem that any contemporary reader aware of the

proverb, "An Eagle does not hatch a dove" (59), would recall

It at this point. It was proverbial that the eagle and the

dove are opposites. The usual sense of the proverb is seen

in a passage in Pettie's translation of The Civile Conversa

tion of M. Steeven C-uazzo, III, II 15 (15^1):"Remembering the 52 saying /in choosing a wife/, that the Eagle breedeth not the

Pigeon."1^' The speaker does not say, "we are the Eagle and the Dove," but "wee in us finde the Eagle and the Dove."

That is, after the death of ourselves and the creation of our new being, we find in us two things that are never found together according to popular wisdon. It may be that the eagle and the dove are symbolic of the aggressive and the submissive, or that there is also an allusion to alchemy.

But on the popular or first level, one might say, the emphasis is on a unique creation. Here one might apply the principle of facilior lectio which Louthan advocates: "... choose the easiest reading the context will bear (itfhether or not there is a textual problem involved),"^

The rarity of the love and what it has produced is underlined again by the reference to the phoenix. The rarity of the phoenix was proverbial, and, as the speaker sa^rs, "we two being one, are it." There are other passages in the poem where a know ledge of proverbs is an aid to explication. The opening line of the third stanza, "Wee can dye by it, if not live by love," is perhaps an allusive denial of two proverbs,

"Lovers live by love as larks live by leeks" (15>7), and

"They love too much that die for love" (1^7)• Once again, Donne may wish to emphasize the unusual quality of the love by saying, in effect, that the common sayings about love,

^Tilley, E2.

^ The Poetry of John Donne, p. 22. S3 particularly the second proverb, do not apply in this instance.

The last stanza, which is made up of the invocation by other lovers to the saints of love, contains allusions to at least four proverbs. The opening lines, "And thus invoke us; You whom reverend love / Made one anothers hermitage;" appear to be a slight alteration of the proverb, "The lover is not where he lives but where he loves" (l£6 ). The popular idea is there, appropriately placed in the mouths of "all" who "shall approve / Us Canoniz’d for Love." The alteration

is the inclusion of words with religious connotations, "reve rend" and "hermitage," in keeping with the prayer-like tone.

The next line, "You, to whom love was peace; that now is rage" is a glance at either "Love is a sweet torment" (II4.O) or "Love is full of fear" (llj.2). Love is now "rage" for the lovers making the invocation, but it never was that for the canonized, ivhich again underscores the rarity of their love. One explication of these final lines is made possible by a knowledge of proverbs:

Who did the whole worlds soule extract, and drove Into the glasses of your eyes, So made such mirrors, and such spies, That they did all to you epitomize , Countries, Townes, Courts: Beg from above A patterne of your love! (Gardner, ESS, pp. 7i|-75, lines \\0-i\S) Louthan has little to say about these lines, perhaps giving consent by his silence to the difficulties discussed by

Grierson. Grierson is quite firm in his rejection of E. K.

Chambers' version, which reads: 5k Who did the whole worlds soul contract* and drove Into the glasses of your eyes; So made such mirrors* and such spies* That they did all to you epitomize-- Countries* towns, courts beg from above A pattern of your love.l6

Of this reading, Grierson says:

These harsh constructions are not Donne’s. The object of ’drove’ is not the ’world’s soul*’ but ’Countries* towns, courts;’ and ’beg' is not in the indicative but the imperative mood. For clearness’ sake I have bracketed 11. L|.2-3 and printed ’love!’ otherwise leaving the punctua tion unchanged.17

What is the source of the imagery and what exactly is the meaning of the first two lines? What is the "worlds soul" and in what sense was it driven into the "glasses" of the lover’s eyes? Plausible answers to these questions can be made* I believe, on the basis of a proverb to which Donne seems to be making a veiled allusion. The proverb is, "The

Eye is the window of the heart (mind)" (6 8 ). If one takes as the antecedent of "who" not the lovers but "love" which made them one another’s hermitage, then it was love that extracted the whole world's soul Dr heart, and drove It into their eyes. Since the eye is the heart's window* it Is in their eyes that others could see a love which was an extrac tion or intensification of love found throughout the world.

The metaphor of the eye as the window explains, by associa tion, Donne's reference to the "glasses of your eyes." Then, the eyes as glasses or windows are viewed as mirrors* and

■^Quoted by Grierson, II, 16.

1 7 Ibid., p. 1 6 . 55 here, again, Donne seems to be drawing upon a proverb: "The

Eye sees not itself but by reflection" (6 8 ). Their eyes are the windoxtfs of their hearts, which contain in essence the love in the world, and they are also mirrors, in which they see their own love reflected. In this reading, then, the object of "drove" is not "Countries, Towns, Courts" but "the worlds soul." Whether the subject is finally understood to be "love" or the "lovers" does not affect this reading. I suggest that the syntactical position of "Countries, Toxtfns,

Courts" is neither the subject of "beg" nor the object of

"drove," but an appositive to "all" in "that they did all to you epitomize." The lovers find "all" in each others’ eyes, that is, Countries, Towns, Courts,--every place.

It would be foolish, certainly, to argue that the proverbs alluded to in "The Canonization" provide complete answers to the many questions raised by the poem. But, since

Donne’s reliance upon proverbs in his poetry cannot be denied, and since it seems certain that he was alluding to several proverbs in this poem, then any explication which does not take the proverbial material into account would seem to be quite limited.

The reader might have wondered) by this time, if

Donne alludes to proverbs only in his so-called secular poetry, since nearly all of the examples have been taken from secular or love poems. Such an impression would be false, for Donne seems to make no sharp separation in his use of proverbs between his love poetry and his religious poetry, although there are fewer proverbs in his religious 56 poetry. This lack of separation is not surprising for students of Donne, who have seldom found an essential dif ference between the techniques of his religious and secular poetry. As Joan Bennet says:

In the religious poetry Donne explores his feelings toward God just as, in the secular poetry, he explored his feelings toward the beloved. He defines the intricate balance of his attitude with similar subtlety, although, as already in the mature love poetry, delight in paradox has given place to the perception of interrelations. In the religious poetry, as in the secular, profound emotion works upon Donne's intellect not as a narcotic but as a stimulant.

Miss Bennett says of Donne that "it is an essential character of his mind that he recognizes trivial mundane affairs as part of the same experience as death and the dread of eternity. "^-9 Both of these statements apply to Donne's use of proverbs. He uses proverbs, itfhich one might consider in a sense as drawn from the world of "trivial mundane affairs," in the same ways in both kinds of poetny, though perhaps to a lesser extent in his religious poetry.

The Holy Sonnets illustrate proverbs functioning as allusions in Donne's religious poetry. Holy Sonnet VI has already been discussed as an example of Donne's using con ventional similes, which form a cluster of proverbial phrases in the first five lines of that poem. Donne does not draw upon proverbs so heavily in any other Holy Sonnet.

Holy Sonnet XIX, however, illustrates Donne's mixing of

Four Metaphysical Poets (New York, I960), p. 33. 19 Ibid., p. 20. 57 human and divine, the human here represented partly by proverbs. The speaker says:

As humorous is my contritione As my prophane Love, and as soone forgott: As ridlingly distemper’d, cold and hott, As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none. (Gardner, DP, p. 16, lines ~ 5-8) The contemporary of Donne might have recognized indirect references to two proverbs: ’’So u n d love is not soon for gotten" (I5i4-), and "Hot love is soon cold" (13^+) • Donne is, it seems, applying the proverbs, which refer to love between man and woman, to the love between man and God. Two other proverbs can be recognized as slightly veiled in these

1 ine s:

So my devout fitts come and go away Like a fantastique Ague; save that here Those are my best days, when I shake with feare. (Gardner, DP, p. 16, lines 12 - 11}.)

Perhaps Donne had in mind the proverb "Agues (Sicknesses)

come on horseback but go away on foot" (I4.) in the first

two lines. But the saying "Pear and shame much sin does

tame" (7 5 ) seems a certain allusion in the last line.

Paradoxically, the days that the speaker shakes with fear

are his best days. The reason is that fear tames the sin.

At times Donne compresses an allusion to a proverb

into a single word, as he does in Holy Sonnet I:

But our old subtle foe so tempteth me, That not one houre my selfe I can sustaine: Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art, And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart. (Gardner, DP, p. 13, lines 11-11+) 58

The proverb hinted at by the word "wing" is "To be under- another’s (mother’s) wing" (252). There is also a possible allusion in "iron heart" to the saying "The iron entered into his soul" (112). As Smith and Heseltine explain, this saying originated from a mistranslation in the Vulgate of the Hebrew Bible, Ps. CIV (CV), 18, which is, literally,

"his person entered into the iron, i.e., fetters, chains."

But the "iron soul" appeared in the Great Bible of 1539: "Whose fete they hurt in the stockes: the yron entered in to hys soule."20

It is generally recognized that the "two great themes of Donne are love and death.Many of the proverbs

Donne uses could be classified under these two themes. Pro verbs expressing some thought about death appear frequently in the religious poetry, just as proverbs dealing with love are often found in the secular poetry, although there is no sharp division. Holy Sonnet X, the theme of which is victory over death through eternal life, illustrates how often Donne will draw on popular sayings for his religious poetry:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe, For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee. From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee doe goe, Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.

^ Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, p. 321.

^Louthan, p. 171. 59 Thou art slave to Pate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well, And better than thy stroake; why swell’st thou then? One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die. (Gardner, DP, p. 9)

If Donne's contemporaries knewT the proverb "He that fears

Death lives not" (i|8 ), they might have found an allusion to it in "some have called thee / Mighty and dreadfull." He is certainly referring to the proverb "Sleep is the image of death" (2 1 2 ), one of his favorites, in line $, and this proverb provides the central idea of the poem, that death is but a sleep from which we will wake once and for all.

The idea of life after death was also proverbial: "He has not lived that lives not after death" (1+7)* Line 7 is simply a restatement of the proverb, "Those that God loves do not live long (The good die young)" (93 ) - ^ Incidentally, three of these four proverbs appeared in the two collections of proverbs by George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (I6I4.O) and Jacula Prudent ium (165U. There are m a n y other examples of Donne's using proverbs as allusions or "dexterously evasive hints." All that I have identified are listed in Part II. We have seen, though, that there are degrees of indirectness in Donne's usage, and that the proverb is usually woven into the texture of the poem. It is the nature of an allusion to

PP Tilley often lists a related proverb or another form of a proverb in parentheses. Here, as elsewhere in this study, I have listed the proverb exactly as it appears in Tilley. be unobtrusive, but an examination of some other uses

Donne makes of proverbs, such as for amplification or for authority, Kill demonstrate that Donne often acknowledges quite clearly his debt to proverbs. 61

Chapter III

PROVERBS USED FOR AMPLIFICATION

Amplification was one of the ways of using proverbs encouraged by the Renaissance rhetoricians, such as Thomas

Wilson, who were generally following the advice of medieval rhetoricians.-1- The medieval rhetoricians advocated a liberal use of proverbs to amplify the subject matter, and

"this amplification consisted of elaborate descriptions, ornaments, digressions, and other devices; and of these, ornament and digression gave ample scope for the inclusion of proverbs, sententiae, or exempla. The somewhat mechani cal approach suggested by this summary description is found

In Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique:

The thirde klnde of Amplifiynge is when wee gather suche sentences as are communelye spoken, or elles bie to speake of suche thynges as are notable in this wyse. Of the first these maye be examples, In lamenting the miserye of warde- shyppes, I might saie it is not for noughts so communely said: I will handle you like a warde. She is a step mother to me: that is to saye, she is not a naturall mother: who is worse shodde then the shomakers wife: that is to saye: gentll- mens children full ofte are kepte but meanelye. Trotte sire and trotte dame, how should the foie amble, that is, when bothe father and mother were noughts, it is not like that the childe will

•^Clark, pp. l60-l6l. p ^Heseltine, p. x. 62 proue good, without an especial grace of God.-^

In Wilson's view, the subject is amplified by the listing of relevant proverbs, and these are ''amplified" by spelling out their meaning, as with "Trotte sire and trotte dame." When Shakespeare amplifies a proverb, his technique bears little resemblance to Wilson's. Shakespeare develops the Imagery of the proverb and adapts it to the occasion.

Tilley^- gives this example of Shakespeare expanding "Make

T> hay while the sun shines":

The sun shines hot, and if we use delay, Cold biting winter mars our hop'd for hay. (Third Part of Henry the Sixth, ------IV”TT1760-61)

This technique of Shakespeare's is actually closer to what

Wilson discusses under "exornation," particularly under

"tropes":

An Allegorie Is none other thyng, but a Metaphor used throughout a Xtfhole sentence, or Oration. As in speaking against a wicked offendour, I might say thus, Oh Lorde, his nature was so evill, and his witte so wickedly bente, that he ment to bouge the shippe, where he hymselfe failed, meaning that he purposed the destruction of his owne countrie. It is evill puttyng strong wine into weake vessels, that is to say it is evill trusting some women with weightie matters. The English Proverbs gatherde by John Heywood helpe wel in this behaulf, the whiche coramenly are nothyng elles by Allegories, and darcke devised sentences.!?

The idea of using one metaphor throughout a whole discourse or throughout a long passage is a more accurate description

3 The Arte of Rhetorlque (1553) Facsimile Reproduction (Gainesville, pror'Idaj 1962), p. lL|.l, Pol. 65.

^•Dictionary, p. vii.

^The Arte of Rhetorlque, pp. 198-199, Pol. 9i|. of Donne's practice than Wilson's remarks on Amplification.

Donne often extends the basic metaphor of a proverb for several lines, integrating it fully into the poem. Eis practice is more like Shakespeare's than it is like that described by Wilson.

Amplification, then, can be understood as expansion

of the ideas or imagery in the proverb. The distinction between allusion and amplification is not a rigid one, and perhaps some of the examples treated as allusion could with

justification be considered as amplification. The difference between the two terms is the difference between the implicit and the explicit. In one, the reader is given a hint and is expected to supply the full proverb. In the other, the ideas

or images implicit in the proverb are drawn out. Quite often, however, the reader is still expected to have a knowledge of the proverb in order to see what is being expanded. The dis tinction will become clearer in an examination of some pro verbs used for amplification which are used elsewhere for alius ion.

We saw Donne employing "As rare as the Phoenix"

(186) in "The Canonization," where the note of rarity is not explicit. In "The First Anniversary," the rarit;y of the

Phoenix is emphasized as Donne expands the proverb to fit the context:

'Tis all in pieces, all cohaerence gone; All iust supply, and all Relation: Prince, Subiect, Father, Sonne, are things forgot, For euery man alone thinkes he hath got To be a Phoenix, and that there can bee None of that kinde, of which he is, but hee, (Manley, pp. 73-7^4-„ lines 213-218) 61+ The proverb is applied to the man who, following "new philosophy cals all in doubt" (line 20^), and he now thinks himself "As rare as the Phoenix." The proverb has been amplified to three lines and also serves as a summary state ment of the world's being "crumbled out againe to his Atomis"

(line 2 1 2 ).

We have seen how Donne treats the proverb "Sleep is the image of death" (212) in "Holy Sonnet X," where it is alluded to rather directly and where the idea is central to the poem, although the imagery is not always closely associ ated with the proverb. The hints are there, however, and for that reason the proverb was discussed as an allusion.

The same proverb seems to be the basis for a long passage in "Obsequies to the Lord Harrington. ..." Here it is as if the proverb provoked Donne's imagination to supply several concrete examples cf the truth expressed by the proverb, A related proverb, "A sleeping Man is no better than a dead man" (2 1 2 ) is also suggested, particularly by the last line:

Thou seest mee here at midnight, now all rest; Times dead-low water; when all minds devest To morrows businesse, when the labourers have Such rest in bed, that their last Church-yard grave, Subject to change, will scarce be'a type of this, How when the clyent, whose last hearing is To morrow, sleeps, when the condemned man, (Who when hee opes his eyes, must shut them than Againe by death,) although sad watch hee keepe, Doth practice dying by a little sleepe, (Grierson, i, p. 271) lines l5-2k) Donne uses the proverbs "Fortune (Justice) is blind"

(82) and "Love is blind" (II4.I) in the poem "His Parting from

Her" primarily as allusions, One reference is simply to 65 "blinded justice"; the other is more difficult to classify as simple allusion, since Donne does expand the proverb:

Till Fortune, that would rive us, with the deed, Strain her eyes open, and it make them bleed. (Gardner, ESS, p. 9 8 , lines 61-62)

Donne is here treating the proverb as a literal statement and then stating the consequences of fortune opening her eyes. The proverb is, in a sense, amplified, but the reader

is not taken far beyond the idea expressed in the proverb.

By contrast, the same proverb is used in "To the Countess of

Salisbury" and here it seems that the ideas contained in the proverb are used to develop a compliment to the Countess:

So, though I1am borne without those eyes to live, Which fortune, who hath none herself, doth give, Which are, fit meanes to see bright courts and you, Yet may I see you thus, as now I doe; (Grierson, I, 226, lines 79-82)

The proverb "Love is blind" (II4.I) was also alluded to in

"His Parting from Her," but in "Love's Exchange" Donne com bines it with the proverb "Love is without reason" (lij.6 ) to get these lines:

Give mee thy /Love's/ weaknesse, make mee blinde, Both wayes, as thou and thine, in eies and minde; (Gardner, ESS, p. 1+6, lines 15-1 6 )

In "The Canonization" Donne uses the proverb "The

Fly (moth) that plays too long in the candle singes its wings at last" (7 9 ) for a very slight allusion, which, as we have seen, he combines with a proverb about tapers. In

the elegy "Oh, Let mee not serve . . . ," however, he expands the proverb by adding concrete details to it, and uses it as 66 a simile for the devil:

. . . ; so, the tapers beanie eye Amorously twinkling, beckens the giddie flie, Yet burnes his wings; and such the dev ill is, Scarce visiting them, itfho are intirely his. (Gardner, ESS, p. 11, lines 17-20)

These comparisons and contrasts between allusion and amplification emphasize the need to distinguish these two uses. When he amplifies a proverb, Donne seems to be treat ing the proverb with more imagination, drawing out the images or ideas suggested by the proverb, or adding concrete details to make the proverb more vivid.

There are better examples of how Donne's mind and imagination often work over a proverb. The first example also illustrates how he often associates one proverb with another, as he does here with the proverbial simile, "As slow as a snail" (211;) and the saying "Like a snail, he keeps his house on his back (head)" (2ll*). In two different poems Donne dwells on these two proverbs, first in "To Henry

Wotton":

Be thou thine owne home, and in thy selfe dwell; Inne any where, continuance maketh hell. And seeing the snaile, which every where doth rome, Carrying his oxirne house still, still is at home, Follow (for he is easie pac'd) this snaile, Bee thine owne Palace, or the world's thy gaile. (Grierson, I, 182, lines 17-52)

The next is from "The Second Anniversary":

Shee, shee, thus richly, and largely hous'd, is gone: And chides vs slow-pac'd snailes, who crawleJ vpon Our prisons prison, earth, nor thinke vs well, Longer, then whil'st we beare our brittle shell. (Manley, p. 99, lines 21*7-250) 67 In the second passage, Donne also alludes to the proverb,

"The body is the prison of the soul" (22).

Donne's contemporaries, x^e can believe, would have had an immediate reaction to these passages, at once recog nizing the source and at the same time enjoying Donne's ability to fit the proverb into a poem and to expand upon it.

These same readers, like the readers of Shakespeare who could recognize immediately the sources of his plays, xvould have been in a much better position than we to distinguish between what was truly original in Donne, or, better, in what exact way he was being original. I doubt that one of

Donne's contemporaries, for example, would have been quite as rhapsodic as George Saintsbury is about some well-known lines in "The Second Anniversary." Leading up to the lines,

Saintsbury says:

It is indeed possible that the union of the sensual, intellectual, poetical, and religious temperaments is not so very rare; but it is very rarely voiceful. That it existed in Donne preeminently, and that it found voice in him as it never has done before or since, no one who knjws his life and works can doubt. That the greatest of this singular group of poems is 'The Second Anniversary,' will hardly, I think, be contested. Here is the famous passage Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say her body thought, which has been constantly quoted, praised, and imi tated.6

Nothing is taken away from these lines if we know that they

/ °"John Donne." Preface to The Poems of John Donne, edited by E.K, Chambers, 2 vols. (London, lb967. Reprinted in part in John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Helen Gardner (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1962), p. 17. 68 may have been based on the proverb, "Blushing (Bashfulness) is virtue’s color (is a sign of grace)" (21). Nor does it detract from them if we know that many Renaissance writers used the proverb, for no one used it quite like Donne.

Shakespeare, for instance, stays rather close to the proverb in Much Ado about Nothing, IV,i,35>:

Behold how like a maid she blushes here. Comes not that blood as modest evidence To witness simple virtue?

Donne has made something much more memorable and beautiful than the proverb, and yet the similarity of the thought should be noted and the proverb considered as a likely source. The same could be said for another well-known passage in "The Extasie," which may deserve the high praise which Saintsbury gives it:

But the passionate mood, or that of mystical reflection, soon returns, and in the one Donne shall sing with another of the wondrous phrases where simplicity and perfection meet: So to engraft our hands as yet Was all our means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation.7

Once again, the remote source of these lines seems to be almost certainly a proverb, "To look babies in another's eyes" (10). Donne uses this proverb also in "Witchcraft by a Picture":

I fixe mine eye on thine, and there Pitty my picture burning in thine eye, My picture droun'd in a transparent teare, When I looke lower I espie; (Gardner, ESS, p. 37, lines 1-10

7"John Donne," p. 20. 69 The same proverb is also used by Sidney in "Astrophel and

Stella":

When thou sawest, in Natures cabinet, Stella, thou straight lokest babies in her eyes.8

The difference in the treatment is that Donne has made the proverb personal and dramatic, as he often does. Perhaps the twisting of the eye-beams in "Ecstasy" is to be explained by Italian Platonism,^ but it seems unnecessary to look far beyond England for the pictures in the eyes.

Sometimes the proverb that Donne is using has become so much a part of our general knoxtfledge, even though we do not think of it as a saying, that we may overlook it. For example, it is commonly known that "Running water is better than standing" (2l;6) or that "Standing pools gather filth"

(2i;6). These were popular sayings in Donne’s time and it is interesting to watch him manipulate the somewhat colorless proverbs. Both proverbs are used in "Change":

Waters stincke some, if in one place they bide, And in the vast sea are worse putrifi’d: But when they kisse one banke, and leaving this Never looke back, but the next banke doe kisse, Then they are purest; Change'is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life, and eternity. (Gardner, ESS, p. 20, lines 31-36)

The two proverbs also appear in "Variety":

Rivers the clearer and more pleasing are Where their fair spreading streams run wide and farr; And a dead lake that no strange bark doth greet,

8 "Astrophel and Stella," The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. William A. Ringler, J ~ (Oxford, 1962), Stanza IX.

9See Gardner, The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets, Appendix D, p. 262. 70 Corrupts it self and what doth live in it. Let no man tell me such a one is fa ire. And worthy all alone my love to share. ^ (Gardner, ESS, p. 10i|, lines 11- 1 6 ) As the last lines indicate, the speaker here is using the proverbs as exempla to "prove" that "Variety takes away satiety" (2L>.2), in nature and in love. The opening lines of the poem call the reader’s attention tD this proverb:

The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much lov'd variety, And not with many youth and love divide? Pleasure is none, if not diversified: (Lines 1-1|)

It would not be difficult to conclude that Donne relies more on proverbs as a means of amplification in poems where he is dealing with conventional views, such as those expressed in "Change" and "Variety." One sometimes suspects that in poems where Donne might not have felt an intense personal involvement, he was relying on proverbs to jog his imagination. In "The Second Anniversary," for example, there is a long passage of praise for Elizabeth Drur;/ which may well have been inspired not by her but by a proverb. The proverb is "Examples teach more than precepts," which Ascham expresses in The Schoolmaster in a -way more clearly parallel to Donne's lines: "One example is more valiable than XX pre-

Although there is some slight texttial support for the authenticity of this poem, Gardner excludes it from the canon mainly because she "cannot find any parallel in Donne's works to the easy, natural, good-tempered tone of this poem" (p. xliv). It is worth noting, however, that here are used the same two proverbs which Donne uses in "Change" and they are used in exactly the same way: as arguments for a variety of lovers. 71 IT cepts written in bookes." Note how Donne explores all the implications of this saying as applied to a person’s life, In this case, to Elizabeth Drury's:

There thou (but in no other schools) maiest bee Perchance, as learned, and as full, as shee, Shee who all Libraries had thoroughly red At home, in her owne thoughts, and practised So much good as would make as many more: Shee whose example they must all implore, Who would or doe, or thinke well, and confesse That aie the vertuous Actions they expresse, Are but a new, and worse edition, Of her some one thought, or one action: Shee, who in th'Art of knowing Heauen, was growen Here vpon Earth, to such perfection, That shee hath, euer since to Heauen shee came, (In a far fairer print,) but read the same: Shee, shee, not satisfied with all this waite, (For so much knowledge, as would ouer-fraite Another, did but Ballast her) is gone, As well t'enioy, as yet perfect lone. And cals vs after her, in that she tooke, ^ (Taking her selfe) our best, and x^orthiest booke. (Manley, p. 101, lines 301-320)

Two passages from "The First Anniversary" also strengthen the impression that Donne depended on proverbs when he had a task to complete. His treatment of proverbs In these

instances seems to be characterized more by ingenuity than

•^Tilley, Dietionary, E213.

l^Manley (p. 191) considers, this passage to be Donne's version of the traditional metaphor, the book of the mind: liber rationis, and refers to the inscription of divine ideas by God as discussed by Bonaventure and John of Salisbury. It seems to me, though, that the proverb is equally relevant to this passage and to the preceding fifty lines, where the plight of the poor soul is described. In lines 2^0-299, the speaker stresses how little man knoxtfs about himself, his ori gin, or the nature of the body, and how men do not understand even the least things--"We see in Authors, too stiff to re cant, / A hundred controuersies of an Ant" (Lines 281-282). Faced with so much controversy and ignorance, man must turn to the example of Elizabeth, which will teach more than all the books. 72 by creative imagination or emotional power. For example, in "A Funerall Elegie" Donne appears to be depending heavily on the proverb "He that would know what shall be must con sider what has been" (120) for the following lines:

Hee which not knowing her sad History, Should come to reade the booke of destiny, How fa ire and chast, humble, and high shee1ad beene, Much promis’d, much perform’d, at not fifteens, And measuring future things, by things before, Should turne the leafe to reade, and reade no more, Would thinke that eyther destiny mistooke, Or that some leaves were torne out of the booke. (Manley, page 8lq, lines 83-90)

Similarly, the two proverbs, "There is Nothing so bad in which there is not something of good" (182) and "Death at the one door and heirship at the other" (L|6) provide the basis for these lines:

Wei dy’de the world, that we might live to see This world of wit, in his Anatomee: No euil wants his good; so wilder heyres Bedew their fathers Toombes with forced teares, Whose state requites their losse: whils thus we gain Well may we walk in blacks, but not complaine, (Page 65, lines 1-6)

Although Donne also uses proverbs for amplification in his religious poetry, he does so less frequently than in the secular poetry. The technique, though, is the same.

The basic idea of the proverb is made more concrete by an elaboration of the imagery as the proverb is being fitted into context. In "A Litanie," for instance, the proverb

"God is a potter and we are the clay" (92) is recognizable:

My heart is by dejection, clay, And by self-murder, red. From this red earth, C Father, purge away All vicious tinctures, that new fashioned I may rise up from death, before I’m dead. (Gardner, DP, p. 16, lines 5-9) 73 Even in so personal a poem as the "Hymn to God, my God, in my sicknesse," Donna is apparently expressing the central

Christian doctrine of the resurrection through popular con

temporary language, found in the proverb, "East and West

(Extremes) become the same" (62):

I joy, that in these straits, I see my West, For, though the ire currants yeeld returne to none, What shall my West hurt me? As West and East In all flatt Maps (and I am one) are one, So death doth touch the Resurrection. (Gardner, DP, p. 50, lines n-15) There are also many examples in the "Holy S.onnets," as is

Illustrated in Part II.

Because of the problems involved in the dating of

Donne’s poems, it would be difficult, if not Impossible, to reach a certain conclusion regarding the relative number of proverbs used in each group of poems. For example, it does not seem justifiable to say that the use of proverbs dimin

ishes as his style matures. What is important and certain is

that Donne uses proverbs in every type of poem, so that it

can safely be said to be a characteristic of his style. What

is true of his allusion to proverbs is also true of his ampli fication of them: it "is so individual that we are usually unaware of the means by which he elicits our response."13

By amplification of a proverb, Donne often makes something entirely new. Just as he transforms stock themes of European

^Gardner makes this comment regarding Donne’s use of rhetorical devices and literary conventions. (The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets, p. xxii) 7h love poetry by his vividly dramatic imagination, so does he transform many stock expressions. But the transformation of amplification of a proverb which was probably on the lips of many of his contemporaries requires great imaginative power, and an awareness of how Donne has amplified proverbs is necessary for our understanding of the nature of his originality.

Because of Donne’s originality, the proverbs used in his allusions and amplifications might have been slightly hidden from his contemporaries. The dexterity of the hint, of course, was highly valued. There is one use of proverbs, however, where Donne calls the reader's attention to the proverb because he wants to use it as a source of authority, the topic of the next chapter.

"^Gardner, ESS, p. xxi.

t 75 Chapter IV

PROVERBS USED FOR AUTHORITY

Proverbs had long appealed to didactic writers as an effective means of instruction. They expressed the dis tilled experience of humanity in a vivid, memorable fashion.

As expressions of man's experience, they had a certain authority; they were a kind of universal witness. They could, then, be used as a testimony with which to build an argument, and were considered as part of a "storehouse of places," classed under Invention, which was a major division of logic.. According to Wilson, this "storehouse" included:

testimonies . . . called, sentences of the sage, which are brought tc confirme any thing, either taken out of olde aucthors, or els soche as haue been vsed in this common life, As the sentences of noble men, the lawes In any realme, quicke saiynges, prouerbes, that either haue bene vsed before, or bee now vsed. Histories of wise Philosophers, the iudgementes of learned men, the common opinion of the multitude, olde cus toms, auncient fashions or any suche like.l

The same view of proverbs is expressed by Henry Peacham, who regards them as "Summaries of maners, or, the Image of human life: for in them there is contained a generall doctrine of direction, and particular rules for all duties in all persons."

^The Rule of Reason, Conteinyng the Arte of Logique (1551, Fol. Lj.9) , quoted by Mauch, p , I0 8 .

^The Garden of Eloquence (1577), quoted by Mauch, pp. 8 8 -8 9 . 76 Donne uses proverbs as witnesses in one of two ways.

He either acknowledges the proverb openly, or he uses the proverb as a kind of conclusion to a whole poem or to a line of argument within a poem.

The proverb is acknowledged as such by Donne through some phrase which indicates that it expresses a common view.

Such phrases include, "as men thinke," "Let no man say,"

"Men say, and truly," or Men say." Writers of the Renaissance were, as Tilley remarks, "fond of introducing a statement by some such phrase as, 'The proverb goeth,1 'As the Proverbe is,1 'as we say.'"^ It cannot be said that Donne is fond of this technique, although he does use it. He never mentions the word "proverb," however, as in "As the Proverbe is," even though he makes his reference to the proverb quite clear, as the following examples illustrate. In one of his verse letters to T/homas/ W/oodward/, Donne cites the proverb,

"Better be envied than pitied" (6£):

Men say, and truly, that - they better be Which be envyed then pittied: therefore I, Because I wish the best, doe thee envie: 0 wouldst thou, by like reason, pitty mee’ (Grierson, I, p. 20l|., lines 9-12)

This same proverb, by the way, is treated more as an allusion than as a witness in "Julia":

Harke newes, o envy, thou shalt heare descry'd My Julia; who as yet was ne’r envy’d. (Gardner, ESS, p. 100, lines 1-2 )

3Supra, p. 12. 77 In "The First Anniversary," the proverb "An ague in the spring is physic for a king" (3 ) is clearly acknowledged: And, as men thinks, that Agues physicke are, And th’Ague being spent, giue over care, So thou, sicke World, mistak'st thy selfe to bee Well, when alas, thouTrt in a Letargee. (Manley, p. 68 , lines 21-2l±)

Here Donne not only accepts the common saying but comments

on the usual behavior following an ague, and then applies both to the world without Elizabeth Drury. Donne not only points up the proverb by a phrase, but he also emphasizes the proverb in other ways, often b;y

setting off either a key word or the entire proverb as a parenthetical remark, or by other punctuation, as if to make

sure that the proverb would not be missed. Both devices are used in "Love's Progress." The speaker is arguing that those

lovers err who start out by focusing attention on the face of the loved one, because it is subject to change and disguise.

The speaker then gives other advice, concluding with the proverb, "The Devil is known by his claws (cloven feet, horns ) " (*~>)\) :

Rather set Dut below; practise my art. Some symetrie the foote hath with that part Which thou dost seeke, and is thy Map for that, Lovely enough, to stop, but not stay at; Least subject to disguise and change it is; Men say, the Devil never can change his. (Gardner, ESS, p. 18, lines 73-78) The proverb here functions as more than an expression of a

common view. By association of the foot of the Devil with

the foot of a woman, Donne helps to maintain the tone of

somewhat cynical humor which characterizes the poem. 78 In the second example, Donne has adapted to the context the proverb, "Custom (Use) is another (a second) nature" (k3)> but he makes the adaptation and the speaker's acceptance of the proverb obvious by emphasizing the key word, "use":

Perfection is in unitie; Preferre One woman first, and then one thing in her. I, when I value gold, may thinke upon The duct illness, the application, The wholesomeness, the Ingenuity, Prom rust, from soyle, from fyre ever free, But if I love It, *tis because 'tis made By our new Nature, Use, the soul of trade. (Gardner, ESS, pp. 16-1?, lines 9-16)

The poem is "outrageous," as Gardner says, and nothing in it

Is more outrageous than the speaker's application of the proverb to woman, who is treated throughout as a thing.

Donne sometimes sets off the entire proverb as a parenthetical remark, but in such a way that the proverb provides proof of an argument or furnishes a general truth parallel to the experience being described. Notice, for

Instance, how he sets off a form of the proverb, "Silence Is

(gives) consent" (208) in his "Elegie; Death":

Language thou art too narrow, and too weake To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speake; If we could sigh out accents, and weepe words, Griefe wears, and lessens, that tears breath affords. Sad hearts, the lesse they seeme the more they are, (So guiltiest men stand mutest at the barre) Not that they know not, feele not their estate, But extreme sense hath made them desparate. (Grierson, I, 28L).-285, lines 1- 8 )

Whether this elegy is in honor of Lady Marckham or Lady

Bedford, some remarks by Grierson on another elegy by Donne 79 for Lady Marckham apply here, Grierson is discussing an

elegy for the same lady by Francis Beaumont which is found

in several Mss. collections of Donne's poems and is sometimes attributed to Donne, sometimes to Beaumont. In the poem,

Beaumont admits that he never knew Lady Marckham. Grierson

comments:

The taste of Beaumont's poem is execrable. Elegies like this, and I fear Donne's among them, were frankly addressed not so much to the memory of the dead as to the pocket of the 1iving. (Grierson, II, 209)

Donne's muse certainly seems to be straining for an expression

of grief in these opening lines. After beginning iv'ith the

conventional notion that language cannot express such grief, he repeats the idea with part of the proverb "Small sorrows

(griefs) speak, great ones are silent" (21$). He follows

this with an adaptation of the proverb "Grief is lessened when imparted to others" (102). Then the speaker says that

the less a sad heart expresses its sadness, the more sad it

is, just as the guiltiest men are the most silent. The

"authority" for this statement, it_appears, i3 the proverb

"Silence is (gives) consent" (208), By setting off as

parenthetical what is obviously a version of the proverb,

Donne is supporting his statement about sad hearts with the

proverb. This device of setting the proverb off as a paren

thetical remark is used in "The Expostulation," where

several other proverbs appear: 80 To make the doubt clears, that no woman's true, Was it my fate to prove it atrong in you? Thought I, but one had breathes purest aire, And must she needs be false because she's falre? Is it your beauties marke, or cf your youth, Or your perfection, not to study truth? Or thinke you heaven is deafe, or hath no eyes? Or those it hath, smile at your perjuries? Are vowes so cheape with women, or the matter Whereof they'are made, that they are writ in water, And blowne away with winde? Or doth their breath (Both hot and cold at once) make life and death? Who could have thought so many accents sweet Form'd into words, so many sighs should meete As from our hearts, so many oaths, and teares Sprinkled among, (All sweeter by our feares And the divine impression of stolne kisses, That seal'd the rest) should now prove empty blisses? Did you draw bonds to forfet? signe to breake? Or must we reade you quite from what you speake, And finde the truth out the wrong way? or must . Hee first desire you false, would wish you just?^- (Gardner, ESS, pp, 9i|-95, lines 1-2 2 )

There would scarcely be anything left of this passage, which is about one-third of the poem, if the proverbs were removed. Here the proverbs seem to have a more integral relationship to the structure of the poem than is usual in

Donne. These first twenty-tv:o~lines are built around ques tions by the injured love. It is Immediately clear that the questions are intended to be understood by the audience as rhetorical questions. Most of them are proverbs which have been turned into questions. In other words, the answers to

^'Of the six elegies usually attributed to Donne which Gardner classes as "Dubia," this poem has the strongest claim for Donne's authorship since it was included In the first edition. There are reasons to question this inclusion, how ever, and Gardner finds the poem generally lacking in Donne's tone, although the themes are handled by him. Once again, as with "His Farting from Her" and "Variety," the treatment of proverbs is not distinctively different from Donne's, except that there seems to be a heavy concentration of them in one- third of the poem. 81 the questions were-proverbial. The answer to "And must she needs be false because she's faire?” is either "Fair face foul heart" (71) or "Beauty and chastity (honesty) seldom meet" (12). Similarly, the next two questions have answers in the proverbs "Jove laughs at lovers' perjuries" (117) and

"Lovers vows are not to be trusted" (158).

The speaker then asks another question: "Or doth their breath / (Both hot and cold at once) make life and death?"

Enclosed in the parentheses is the saying "Out of one Mouth to blow hot and cold," which is the proverbial mark of the dissembler. The proverb, then, represents the common opinion on Women and is really an affirmative answer to the que s 1 1 on.

It is interesting to consider the assistance that proverbs can give to the solution of textual problems. This particular passage has been read two different ways, the difference depending upon the placement of "at once."

Grierson places the phrase with "Both hot and cold" rather than with "make life and death," as was done in the 1633-89 edition. The sense of the proverb appears to favor Grierson's reading, for the emphasis is on the hot and cold as issuing at once. Some writers using the proverb add a phrase like

"With the same breath." In 1627, W. Eawrkins in Apollo

Sliroving II, iii, p. 119, used a form close to Donne's: "Doe you blow hot and cold at once,.at once will and nill?"^

There are several more proverbs in the passage.

^Tilley, M1298. 82 Lines 13-10 depend upon them, or at least suggest them. The

entire passage, describing the course of love from sweetness to "empty blisses," recalls the proverb "Love is sweet in the beginning but sour in the ending" (lh5). Within this passage, enclosed by parentheses, is a form of the proverb, "Stolen pleasures are sweetest" (189). Then, the last four lines in

the series of questions are rather obscure lines which can be explicated with the help of proverbs. The line, "Lid you

draw bonds to forfet? signe to breake?" may be another allu

sion to "Lovers' vows are not to be trusted" (158), The next two lines, "Or must we reade you quite from vrhat you

speake, / and finde the truth out the wrong way," canbe understood in the light of two related proverbs: "A Woman

says nay (no) and means aye" (258); "A woman's heart and her

tongue are not relatives" (253). The final question,"...

or must / Hee first desire you false, would wish you just?"

seems explainable by the saying "A Woman does that which is

forbidden her" (256), or, as it was put by Richard Hill

(1536) in his commonplace book, "A woman oftymes will do that she is not bede to do."

The several proverbs in the interrogator;/ part of

"The Expostulation" have been used to express some conven tional attitudes toward women. The speaker admits the fact

immediately after the last question:

0 I prophane, though most of women be This kinds of beast, my thought shall except thee; (Lines 23-214.)

6Tilley, W6£0. 83 The proverbs have served as the witness of generations, even centuries, to the popular notion of what most women are like.

Another technique which Donne uses when he wants a proverb to function as a witness is to place the proverb in a conspicuous position, usually at the end of a lengthy argu ment where it operates as a conclusion or as a generalization, summing up the thought of several preceding lines. . In "His

Parting from Her," for example, the proverb is both a summary of the speaker's challenge to fortune and a justification for the challenge:

Oh Fortune, thou’rt not worth my least exclame. And plague enough thou hast in thine owne shame. Do thy great worst, my friend and I have armes, Though not against thy strokes, against thy harrnes. Render us in sunder, thou canst not divide Our bodies so, but that our soules are ty'd, And we can love by letters still and gifts, And thoughts and dreamesj Love never wanteth shifts. (ESS, p. 99, lines 65-72)

Gardner considers "Love never wanteth shifts" a "weak addi tion to fill out the line," a "tame consolation when we com pare it with Donne's other treatments of the theme of union in absence. Perhaps the words gain strength if vie consider them a conclusion to the challenge to fortune, not simply a filler. The words have the authority of experience behind them, the truth of the ages. It is true that the thought expressed is more conventional than that in "A Valediction:

Forbidding Mourning," but Donne, as we have seen, often makes use of conventional (i.e., proverbial) expressions. A simi lar use of a proverb as a conclusion occurs in "Epithalamion

^The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets, p. xlii. 8^ Made at Lincolne’s Inne," where the proverb "The Truth shows best being naked" {238) is treated with the kind of imagina tion characteristic of Donne at his best:

Thy virgins girdle now untie, And in thy nuptiall bed (loves altar) lye A pleasing sacrifice; now dispossesse Thee of these chaines and robes which were put on T'adorne the day, not thee; for thou, alone, Like vertue’and truth, art best in nakednesse; (Grierson, I, ll|3> lines 73-78)

Often, Donne makes It quite obvious that he intends the proverb to function as an ending by placing It in an end position, either at the end of the stanza or at the end of the poem. In the lengthy poem "The Progresse of the Soule," at least three stanzas are so ended:

XL In which as in a gallery this mouse Walk'd, and surveid the roomes of this vast house, And to the braine, the soules bedchamber, went, And gnaw'd the life cords there; Like a whole tovme Cleane undermin'd, the slaine beast tumbled downe; With him the murtherer dies, whom envy sent To kill, not scope, (for, only hee that ment To die, did ever kill a man of better roome,) And thus he made his foe, his prey, and tombe: Who cares not to turn back, may any whither come. (Grierson, I, 311) This last line appears to be a version of "He runneth far that never turneth again" (200). In stanza XLVI, the pro verbial comparison, "As Wise as an ape" (9)* provides the c onelud ing 1 Ine :

XLVI It quickned next a toyfull Ape, and so Gamesome it was, that it might freely goe From tent to tent, and with the children play. His organs now sd like theirs hee doth finde, That why he cannot laugh, and speake his minde, He wonders. Much with all, most he doth stay With Adams fift daughter Siphatec ia, Doth gaze on her, and, where she passeth, passe, Gathers her fruits, and tumbles on the grasse, And wisest of that kinde, the first true lover was. (Grierson, I, 313)

In stanza XLVIII, Donne concludes with the proverb

"Nature Is the true law" (179), which he sets off syntacti cally as we have seen him do before:

By this misled, too low things men have prov'd, And too high; beasts and angels have beene lov'd. This Ape, though else through-raine, in this was wise, He reach'd at things too high, but open way There was, and he knew not she would say nay; His toyes prevaile not, likelier means he tries, He gazeth on her face with teare-shot eyes, And up lifts subtly with his russet pawe Her kidskinne apron without feare or awe Of nature; nature hath no gaole, though shee hath law. (Grierson, I, 3lU)

The last stanza of this poem, LII, illustrates another use

Donne makes of the proverb, one closely related to the use we have been examining. In this use, the proverb functions as the conclusion of the entire poem, that Is, as the ending in a structural sense. The entire stanza has the sense and tone of the conclusion as it builds up to the proverb,

"Nothing is good or bad but by comparison" (l8l):

Who ere thou beest that read'st this sullen Writ, Which just so much courts thee, as thou dost it, Let me arrest thy thoughts, wonder with mee, Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, Or most of these arts, whence our lives are blest, By cursed Cains race invented be-, And blest Seth next us with Astronomie. Tlier's nothing simply good, nor ill alone, Of every quality comparison, The onely measure is, and judge, opinion. (Grierson, I, 315-316)

Nothing better illustrates Donne's willingness to use a proverb when it suits his purpose than Elegy VIII,

"The Comparison," where he concludes the poem with the 86 saying, "Comparisons are odious" (35)> which is contradic tory to the proverb we just examined. The poem is one long exemplum for the proverb, since the speaker makes several odious comparisons, indeed, and applies them to his friend or acquaintance and his friend’s mistress. There is an am biguity in the proverb as the conclusion to a list of odious comparisons, for while the comparisons are all highly unfavor able, the proverb softens them all by stating the common view that such comparisons as that between my mistress and your mistress are always odious. The last several lines of the poem convey the general tone and show how the proverb is used:

Are not your kisses then as filth;/, ’and more, As a worme sucking an invenom’d sore? Doth not thy fearefull hand in feeling quake, As one which gath’ring flowers, still feare'd a snake? Is not your last act harsh, and violent, As when a Plough a stony ground doth rent? So kisse good Turtles, so devoutly nice Are Priests in handling reverent sacrifice, And such in searching wounds the Surgeon is As wee, when wee embrace, or touch, or kisse. Leave her, and I will leave comparing thus, She, and comparisons are odious. (Gardner, ESS, p. 6, lines k3-$k) . The final example of a proverb functioning as a conclusion is an interesting one because it seems to repre sent a fusion between Renaissance Neo-Platonism and popular wisdom. It is quite likely that the former was the source for the latter. It should be noted, however, that an idea popular among some of the intellectuals of the day may also have been common in the marketplace. The idea was expressed memorably by Spenser: For of the soule the bodie forme doth take: „ For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.

The proverb is "Virtue (valor) is the beauty (nobleness) of the soul (mind)" (2ii_3). Here is Donne's conclusion to his poem "To Mr. R. W.":

If men be'worlds, there is in every one Some thing to answere in some proportion All the worlds riches: And in good men, this, Vertue, our formes forme and our soules soule, is. (Grierson, I, 210, lines 29-32)

In using proverbs as a means of ending a line of argument, a stanza, or a poem, Donne was in a tradition going back to the medieval rhetoricians, and, through them, back to

Aristotle. Janet Keseltine says that the medieval rhetoricians recommended a liberal use of proverbs as beginnings or endings.

Chaucer used them in this way, as B. J. Whiting discovered:

Chaucer used proverbs or sententious remarks at the beginning of literary units four times, and at the end in the case of six pieces. A single proverb is used in most cases, but there are four in the prologue to Bock II of Troilus and Criseyde, and the Manciple's Tale ends with a stream of proverbs, poured out pell-mell.10

Donne generally uses a single proverb for a conclusion, although, as we have seen, there are many clusters of pro verbs throughout the poems. Whether Donne was influenced by the rhetoricians or not is beside the point here. Whiting speculates that Chaucer may have been influenced not by the

^"A Hymne in Honour of Beautie," The Complete Poeti- cal Works of Spenser, ed. R. E. Neil Dodge (Cambridge, Mass,, 193M, p. TP,""lines 132-133.

^Heselt ine, p . x.

•^Chaucer's Use of Proverbs, p. 18. 88 rhetoricians but by Deschamps or by the writers of the

Fabliaux.What is important is to recognize that an ~ essential element of Donne's style is the proverb function ing as an authoritative statement or common viewpoint, and as an ending, summary, or conclusion. In this habit of thought, Donne was part of a tradition.

We should distinguish, finally, between Donne's use of a proverb for authority and his acceptance of the proverb as true. At times he uses contradictory proverbs, and at all times he seems more interested in fitting the proverb into the context rather than in its didactic worth. Some times the proverb is intended to be a conclusive statement, but Donne can also apeak with contempt for proverbs. In the elegy ''/Tutelage/," for example, the speaker is reminding his lover how much he has taught her about love, and he asks her to recall her former state:

Remember since all thy words us'd to bee To every suitor; I, _if mg fr iends agree: Since, household cbarmes, thy husbands name to teach, Were all the love trickes, that thy wit could reach; And since, an houres discourse could scarce have made One answer in tbee, and that ill arraid In broken proverbs and torne sentences. (Gardner, ESS, p. 12, lines 13-19) This passage emphasizes the difficulty of discussing

Donne's attitude toward proverbs apart from particular poems.

He does not simply accept a proverb as true and therefore authoritative. He will use it as if it were true in a parti cular poem, but he might contradict it in another poem.

^Whiting, p. 18. 89 Like Shakespeare, Donne exploits this technique of using proverbs for authority by sometimes accepting the common 12 beliefs and sometimes denying them.

Regardless of how Donne treated the "truth” contained in the proverb, when he used any proverb he adopted, often, the stylistic traits of the proverb. The relationship between the st7/listic traits of proverbs and Donne's style is the subject of the next chapter.

12Tilley, pp. vii-viii. 90 Chapter V

THE STYLE OF PROVERBS. AND DONNE1S-STYLE

The proverb, according to a recent definition, Is

"usually, but not always, crystallized by some conspicuous formal characteristic."^- Some proverbs, for example, have the form of paradox--"The nearer the church, the farther from God"; others are a kind of allegorical statement--"A bird in the hand is worth two In .the bush." Some are built on alliteration--"The more the merrier"; others on rhyme--

"Fast bind, fast find." Some are shaped by ellipsis--

"Uncouth unkissed"; some by repet it I011--"Enough is enough."

Many proverbs are metaphorical, but even in the simple non metaphor ical proverbs, there is often "parallelism and con- p trast in words, structure and thought." Simple parallel structure Is found in "Many men, many minds," and contrast alone in "Hindsight is better than foresight." Sometimes the parallelism In structure emphasizes the contrast--

"Young saint, old devil." Most proverbs, then, have peculiar formal or stylis tic traits. A writer who uses proverbial material extensive ly, as Donne certainly does, may owe a little or a great deal to the stylistic traits of the proverbs which he incor-

Mauch, p. 10. ^Taylor, p. 1^3 . 91 porates into his poetry. He will owe less, of course, to the extent that he alters the form of the proverb to fit the context of the poem. It is the purpose of this chapter not to examine each individual proverb used by Donne, but to illustrate some of the ways in which his style has been in fluenced by the stylistic traits of proverbs. Particular attention will be given to the relationship between the pro verb and the conceit, that use of figurative language most commonly associated with Donne. A knowledge of proverbs is a valuable aid in clarif7/ing the nature of the conceit.

Donne has not, surprisingly, made extensive use of proverbs which are paradoxical in form. This is not to say that he does not use proverbial material.to construct a paradox. It may be true that "the only way by which the poet could say what ’The Canonization’ says is by paradox,"3 and it has already been demonstrated that Donne uses several proverbs in "The Canonization."^ Some of these proverbs, such as "The Ply (moth) that plays too long in the candle singes its Things at last," are not paradoxical in form. On the other hand, the proverb "A Candle (torch) lights others and consumes Itself," which appears as "We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die".might be considered paradoxical in form.

The proverb "Who weens himself wise, Wisdom wats him a fool"

(2^3) is paradoxical, and Donne keeps this formal aspect in

3cieanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn (New York, 19U7), P- 17- ^Supra, pp. L).7-53 • The Triple Poole": "Who are a little wise, the test fooles bee" (Gardner, ESS, p. 52, line 22). In another instance,

Donne alludes to the paradox expressed in the proverb, "For tune (woman) is constant only in inconstancy" (83), in the poem "His Parting from Her":

Be then ever your selfe, and let no woe Win on your health, your youth, your beauty: so Declare your self base fortunes Enemy, No less by your contempt then constancy: (Gardner, ESS, p. 99, lines 89-92)

Perhaps the best example of a paradox in Donne’s poetry which is due primarily to his use of a proverb which is paradoxical in form, occurs in "The Prohibition": "Hate mee, because .thy love’s too great for mee" (Gardner, ESS, p. i|0, line 20). Donne is here apparently restating this proverb:

"The greatest Hate proceeds from the greatest love" (103).

Many of the proverbs which Donne uses are character

ized by alliteration, but he seldom preserves the allitera tion. This is further evidence of the freedom with which

Donne manipulates proverbs generally. He seems always to be more interested in the demands of the particular poem and the context in which the proverb is used than he is in pre

serving the form of a proverb. Compared to the total number

of proverbs which he uses, the number of those 'whose alliter at ion is maintained is insignificant. In "The Expostulation

it appears that some of the alliteration, along with the parallelism and contrast, of "Fair face foul heart" (71) is

kept in the line, "And must she needs be false because she’s

faire" (Gardner, ES3, p. 9i+, line [).) . Similarly, the alii- 93 teration of "Likeness causes liking (love)" (132) is con tinued in "Change": Likenesse glues love: Then if soe thou doe, To make us like and love, must I change too? (Gardner, ESS, p. 20, lines 23-21*) It is difficult to see in this case how Donne could have omitted the alliteration without losing the proverb entirely.

Similarly, the proverb "Stolen Pleasures are sweetest" (189) could not be easily expressed without the alliteration.

Donne uses this proverb twice, once in "Expostulation" and once in "His Parting from Her":

Who could have thought so many accents sweet Form'd into words, so many sighs should meete As from our hearts, so many oathes, and teares Sprinkled among, (all sweeter by our feares And the divine impression of stolne kisses, That seal'd the rest) should now prove empty blisses? (Gardner, ESS, pp. 9lj-95, lines 13-18)

Stoln (more to sweeten them) our many blisses Of meetings, conference, embracements, kisses? (Gardner, ESS, p. 98, lines 1*7 -1*8 )

There are a few other instances where Donne keeps the alli teration of the proverbs as with "fuel" and "fire," drawn from two proverbs, "Add Fuel to the fire" and "Take away

Fuel take away fire." But these examples do not merit dis cussion except as further evidence that when Donne maintains the alliteration of a proverb it seems almost accidental.

The instances of alliterative proverbs which he neglects are too many, and the ones he uses too few, to permit one to say that Donne's style was greatly influenced by the alliter- 9k at ion of proverbs.

Although there are few examples of Donne's using proverbs for their rhyme, paradox, or alliteration, there are several instances of parallel structure in his poetry which can be traced to the parallel structure of a proverb.

Even here, though, the number of examples is only about ten, which is very slight in proportion to the body of Donne's poetry. In a few cases, Donne has altered only the diction of the proverb, keeping the structure. For example, the proverb, "Fire is love, and water sorrow" (77) appears in

"The Dissolution": "My fire of Passion, . . . water of teares" (Gardner, ESS, p. 86, lines 9-10). More extensive alteration of diction is performed on the proverb "Tears in the eyes, ruth in the heart" (2 3 3 ), but again the parallel structure of the proverb is recognizable in two passages.

The first is from "Holy Sonnet III":

In mine Idolatry what showres of raine Mine eyes did waste? What griefs my heart did rent? (Gardner, DP, p. 13, lines “ 5-6) The second is from "The Lamentations of Jeremy": And for my citys daughters sake, mine eye Doth break mine heart. (Gardner, DP, p. I4.3, lines 2li9-2£C)

In "His Parting from Her," the proverb "Say well is good but do well is better" (201) provides the sense and, perhaps, the parallelism of the second line of this couplet:

For this to th’comfort of my Dear I vow, My Deeds shall still be what my ivords are now; (Gardner, ESS, p. 100, lines 95-96) 9? Bonne is able to achieve a kind of unexpressed parallelism by alluding to a proverb that is parallel in

structure. The reader, knowing the proverb, recalls the parallelism of the original. One familiar with the ellipti

cal proverb "No cross, no crown" (I4.I), for example, might think of the full proverb when he reads these lines from

"The Crosse":

Better were worse, for, no affliction, No crosse is so extreme, as to have none. (Gardner, DP, p. 26, lines ~ 13-lU) Also, the first half of the proverb "Small Sorrows (griefs)

speak, great ones are silent" (2l£)‘Is easily "heard" when

one reads these lines from "Elegy: Death":

Language thou art too narrow, and too weake To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speak; (Grierson, I, 281+, lines 1-2) If these proverbs are "heard" by the reader, then, in a

sense, Donne is subtly bringing a parallelism to the passage

not by direct statement but by allusion.

Donne's debt to proverbs for such stylistic traits

as parallelism, contrast, and alliteration seems slight,

indeed, when compared with his extensive use of proverbs as

a source for imagery. Because this source of Donne's Imagery

has never been recognized, studies of his imagery have been

somewhat out of balance In favor of the erudite over the

commonplace. In the more specialized studies of the conceit

it has seldom been recognized that proverbs are the bases

for many "conceits." The result, in both the studies of

the imagery and of the conceits, is that Donne's originality 96 Is exaggerated, and his use of traditional or conventional material is slighted. Some remarks on proverbs and Donne’s imagery and proverbs and Donne's conceits are, therefore, necessary.

Three characteristics of Donne’s imagery have been frequently noted: its intellectual quality, its avoidance of the commonplace, and its realism. Donne's imagery may be valued, Leonard Unger says, "because it is found to be urban, intellectual, realistic.In a full length study of the sources cf Donne’s imagery, Milton Rugoff emphasizes Donne's

"utilization of the least obvious aspects of the familiar.

This tendency is allied, Rugoff says,

. . . to that which turned him toward unfamiliar or recondite sources. By means of both types he avoided the really commonplace, striking out figures which he could be quite sure had not been used before.7

The same view is expressed by R. L. Sharp, who believes that Donne, like the other metaphysical poets, "attempted to rid poetry of those 'servile weedsimitative moods and phrases, superficiality, facility, and that sensuousness p which is always antithetical to Intellectual content."0

Even though Donne had an "hydroptique" thirst for learning, and even though much of his imagery is intellectual

^Donne's Poetry and Modern Criticism (Chicago, 195>0)- p. 8 7 .

°Rugoff, p. 123.

7Ibid., pp. 123-121;.

Sr . L. Sharp, "Some Light on Metaphysical Obscurity and Roughness," SP, XXXI (19347, 498. 97 and unconventional, his use of proverbs forces one to admit that he did draw heavily upon the conventional and the non intellectual . The proverb is by nature a commonplace and, since its appeal is to the ear and memory rather than to the intellect, it is, in a sense., non intellectual.

Proverbs are usually metaphorical, although the proverbial apothegm such as "Live and Learn"; "Enough is enough"; "What’s done's done," is characterized by an absence of metaphor. Donne seldom uses this type of proverb. Most of the proverbs and proverbial phrases which he uses are metaphorical, and Chapter III illustrates how often the metaphor is amplified by his imagination.

It would seem that Donne’s use of proverbial similes alone (I count some fifty instances) would force one to qualify the statement that he "avoided the really common place." Any reader of Part II might find the adjectives

"intellectual" and "unconventional" inadequate as descrip tions of Donne's imagery. The evidence of Part II supports a conclusion reached by George Williamson:

Contrary to many critics, I find in Donne a rather frugal store of images and a definite economy in their use, except where the effect depends upon sheer multiplicity. . . . In short, if one isolates the astronomical, phy siological, and scholastic figures in Donne, one removes a very large part of his store of images.9

I would add "proverbial material" to the list of sources, and stress that this addition may remind us that Donne was

9"Dcnne and Today" in A Garland for John Donne, pp. 162-163- 98 as interested in the speech of his own day as he was in its astronomy or physiology or philosophy.

Finally, there is the relationship between the pro verb and the conceit. The definition of a metaphysical con ceit is usually built on Dr. Johnson’s comments in his essay

on Cowley. He found metaphysical poetry to be characterized by . . . discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. . . . The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.10

The metaphysical conceit is usually regarded as more far fetched than the Petrarchan conceit, more original and less

trivially ornamental.H It is now generally agreed that the

conceit is not as central to Donne's poetry or to the poetry

of the other metaphysical poets as was once thought. The word "conceited" does not sum up the quality of metaphysical poetry for Gardner, and for Mario Praz, the chief thing with Donne is not the "concetti" but the dialectical slant of his mind. ^-3

The conceit as it is usually understood, however,

^Dr. Johnson, "The Life of Abraham Cowley," pp. 2-3.

-^Sylvan Barnet, et al,, A Dictionary of Literary Terms (Boston, I960). 12 Helen Gardner, ed. The Metaphysical Poets (Oxford, 1961), p . xxix. 11 "Donne's Relation to the Poetry of His Time," p. 57- msy be even less important than we now consider it to be simply because there is confusion for some between a conceit and a proverb. Many proverbs in Donne's poetry * having gone unrecognized, have been called conceits. The consequences are important, for the word "conceit" suggests a far-fetched quality in the comparison and an originality, both of which are attributed to Donne. But if the comparison is, in fact, a proverb, then we should attribute the fantastic quality of the comparison and the originality to the author of the proverb, who is, probably, unknown.^

The twentieth-century reader of Donne who is unfair 11 iar with proverbs needs to be cautioned against the too easy application of the word conceit. To prove that it has been over-used, I will cite some examples from various critics.

The first example is one where the proverb provides the basic idea for a longer passage in which the metaphor is elaborated to the point where it is best described as a conceit. The poem is "Hymne to God my God, in my sicknesse, and the passage is the well known one that Donne builds around the map figure:

Whilst my Physitians by their love are growne Cosmographers, and I their Mapp, who lie Plat on this bed, that by them may be showne

I1, "'‘"With regard to the authorship of a proverb, Taylor remarks: "Of course an individual creates a proverb and sets it in circulation. The inventor's title to his property may be recognized by all who use it or his title may be so ob scured by the passage of time that only investigation will determine the source of the saying. Wo one disputes Shakespeare's claim to To be or not to be, but Sir Francis Bacon has not ma'intainecThTs Hold on-Knowledge is power with equal success (The Proverb, p. 3'^f) • 100 That this is ray South-west discoverie Per freturn febris, by these streights to die, I joy, that in these straits, I see my West; For, though theire currants yeeld returne to none, What shall ray West hurt me? As West and East In all flatt Maps (and I am one) are one So death doth touch the Ressurrection. (Gardner, DP, p. 50, lines 6-1]?)

The basic idea in the passage is expressed in the proverb

"East and West (Extremes) become the same" (62), which is alluded to in the last two lines. Donne has, it is true, developed the idea at length in an- original way, but it should be noticed that his primary material is a proverb.

A better example is "The Canonization," which has already been discussed in detail in Chapter II. Critics commonly refer to the comparisons of the lovers to flies, tapers, and the phoenix as conceits. Brooks calls these

"fantastic comparisons," different from the "threadbare

Petrarchan conventionalities" in their "sharpness and bite."-^

Unger accepts them as conceits, and Hunt, too, refers to them as "witty conceits. "-*-7 But if these images are pro verbial, then they are no less conventional than a Petrarchan conceit. In Florlo's Second Fruits (1591)> XII, p. 171* we read, "All of us . . . are before women . . . like fly neare to the candle."^® The comparisons In Donne’s poem are not

16 The Well Wrought Urn, p . li|.

16Donne’s Poetry and Modern Criticism, pp. 27-28. 17 Donne's Poetry: Essays In Literary Analysis, p. 77.

l8TIlley, F391+. 101 nearly as fantastic from the viewpoint of his contemporaries as they might seem to us, and we might better call them pro verbs rather than conceits if it enables us to keep Donne's originality in focus.

The last stanza of nThe Canonization" illustrates the same point. It has been described as based on a "com plex conceit" built upon the visual picture of the two lovers staring fixedly into each other's eyes. Both Hunt and Mahood consider this "conceit" to be a reworking of the same "fancy" that is found in "The Good-morrow, I agree that the same fancy is in both passages, but I would argue that the basis is the proverb "To look babies in another's eye" (10). The imagery is more accurately described as con ventional, and to describe it as fanciful or to apply the word "conceit" may obscure the conventional character.

In summary, I support Miss Gardner's remarks about metaphysical conceits as applied to Donne:

Much stress has been laid recently upon the strongly traditional element in the conceits of metaphysical poetry. A good deal that seems to us remote, and idiosyncratic, the paradoxes and twistings of Scripture to yield symbolic mean ings, reaches back through the liturgy and through commentaries on Scripture to the Fathers and can be paralleled in medieval poetry.20

One of these strongly traditional elements of the conceit is often a proverb, which, although remote to us, may reach out

■^Hunt, pp. 82-83 and M. M. Mahood, Poetry and Humanism (London, 1950), pp. 93-91+.

^ G a r d n e r , The Metaphysical Poets, p. xxxii. 102 to Donne's contemporaries, or back to medieval poetry or the

Church Fathers, or even back beyond them to classical writers. 103

Chapter VI

DONNE’S COMMON LANGUAGE AND OBSCURITY

The knowledge that Donne uses proverbs often in his poetry makes the reader sensitive to certain stylistic traits or habits of expression which can be traced directly to Individual proverbs. A knowledge of proverbs can also deepen our understanding of two aspects of Donne's style which have often been discussed--his common language and his obscurity.

Dryden praised Donne for his "deep thoughts In common language,"! and T. S. Eliot says that ". . . Donne ought always to be recognized as one of the few great re formers and preservers of the English tongue."^ This common language is used by Donne to achieve a colloquial idiom, which has often been noted and is usually regarded as one of the distinguishing marks of the metaphysical style. Donne's principal innovation was that "he first made it possible to think in lyric verse.His syntax, except for an occasional surprise, follows the "movement Df talk,"U exhibiting, like

~"An Essay of Dramatick Poesy," Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (New York, 1951), I, 52.

^"Donne in Our Time," A Garland for John Donne, p. 19.

^ lb id. , p . 16. ^Helen C. White, The Metaphysical Poets, p. 92. 10k

Herbert, T,an instinctive feeling for common speech--pithy, sententious, and shrewd."^

Part of the explanation of DonneTs speech rhythms is that the metaphysical manner originated in the 1 5 9 0 's, the decade of the great flowering of the drama.^ Donne introduced into the lyric the cadences of speech which the contemporary dramatists had developed in blank verse.7 F. R.

Leavis considers it idle speculation to wonder whether or not Donne actually gained anything from dramatic verse, but nevertheless he believes that Donne’s T,verse--the technique, the spirit in which the sinew and living nerve of English are used--suggests an appropriate development of impressions

O that his ear, might have recorded in the theatre." Leavis is reminded of Shakespeare by Donne’s subtle use of the speaking voice,9

Sometimes Donne’s common language is understood in a negative sense as his deliberate avoidance of convention ally poetic diction, an avoidance that some consider to be

^L. C. Knights, "On the Social Background of Meta physical Poetry," Scrutiny, XIII {19kS)) P* Ul. ^Helen Gardner, "The Metaphysical Poets" in Seven teenth Century English Poetry, ed, William R. Keast (New York, 196h ), p. 37. ^Joan Bennett, Four Metaphysical Poets (New York, I960), p. 51.

3"The Line of WTit," in Seventeenth Centur7/ English Poetry, ed. William R. Keast, p. 33*

9Ibid., p. 33. 10$ "almost without parallel in English poets,Like Words

worth, Donne and the other metaphysical poets prefer words

in everyday use, but they go beyond Wordsworth's "natural

language of impassioned feeling" to the "natural language

of men when they are soberly engaged in commerce or on

scientific speculation, so that the words themselves, apart

from their meaning in the context, have no repercussions.

In spite of this natural language, however, Donne's diction,

viewed over all, is, like the diction of many Df his contem

poraries, a "free and flexible mixture of the plain and the

purple, the learned and the colloquial."-^

The contribution that the proverbs in Donne's poetry make to his colloquial idiom has not been appreciated. The proverb has, by nature, the rhythm of speech since it ori

ginates as a spoken form and appeals more to the ear than to

the eye. The late l$90's was not only the period of the

flowering of the drama, where proverbs were used freely, but

it was also a high point in England of a centuries-long

interest in the proverb. The proverb was the "small change

of conversation," "everybody's weapon," and the age was

"soaked in proverbs." Nondramatic poets like Wyatt, Skelton,

and Drayton had used the proverb, and it had long been con

sidered the normal ingredient of colloquial or low style in

"^Bernard Groom, The Diction of Poetry from Spenser to Bridges (Toronto, 1955) > P « 5TjTi ‘'■“Bennett, pp. 12-13. 12Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, p . 1+0 Ol 106 prose. It was regarded as proper for certain genres, such as the pastoral, and generally for any work aimed at a popular audience.^

When Donne used a proverb, then, he was gaining the

effect of the speaking voice very simply. Since they were primarily spoken forms, it seems to me that proverbs contri bute to what Josephine Miles calls the "native predicative mode in English," "the mode of discursive speech," which she

finds in Chaucer and Wyatt (both of whom used proverbs) and

in Donne. Certainly what Tilley says of Shakespeare can be said of Donne: he "observed the speech habits of the people around him with close attention.""^ Donne’s common language or plain diction is also

due partly to his use of proverbs. The proverb is usually

composed of common language. As Taylor says, "they /prc-

verbs^ must necessarily restrict their choice of words to 6 the simplest and the most obvious materials."'0] In the pro

verbial vocabulary there are, with the exception of a few

relic Xtfords and nonce-formations, few peculiarities of dic-

tion. 17 Proverbs, as I have said, often grow out of the

marketplace, out of the homely and familiar; they are ex

pressed in the natural language of men.

^Mauch, p. 7 8 - ~^Eras and Modes in English Poetry, 2nd ed. (Berke ley, 1961;), p. 2 0 .

16Diet ionary, p . vii.

l6The Proverb, p. 135. 1 7 Ibid., p. 135- 10? Proverbs are invaluable, therefore, if we are to appreciate fully Donne's plain diction and colloquial idiom.

The modern reader, more often than not unfamiliar with the proverb, may miss the strong conversational tone of a passage. A case in point is the following stanza from "The

Ganonizat ion":

Gall us what you will, wee’are made such by love; Call her one, mee another flye, We*are Tapers too, and at our owne cost die, And wee in us finde the'Eagle and the Dove; The Phoenix ridle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it, So, to one neutrall thing both sexes fit. Wee dye and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love. (Gardner, ESS, p. 7b> lines 19-27) The colloquial tone and common language of these lines must have been quite evident to Donne's contemporaries, who would have recognized the four proverbs which, as we have seen,

Donne uses here: "The Fly (moth) that plays too long in the candle singes its wings at last" (79); "A Candle lights others and consumes itself" (25); "As rare as a phoenix"

(186); "The Eagle doth not hatch a dove" (59). But for a modern critic, apparently unaware of the proverbial language, it is at this place in the poem where the conversational tone is lost. Clay Hunt says,

After the first line of stanza 3 the speaker seems to work away from a direct concern with his oppo nent and, as the mind turns inward to an examina tion of his love, the poem loses the lively con versational immediacy of an answer to an actual opponent and takes on instead the character of an analytic private meditation.

1 R Donne's Poetry, p. 75. io8 This passage in "The Canonization" is only one of many in

Donne's poetry, no doubt, where we are likely to miss the colloquial idiom because we have lost touch with the pro verbs themselves.

Another consequence of our failure to lift this veil

of outworn fashion, in some ways more serious than missing the tone of a poem, is that we exaggerate Donne's obscurity.

Obscurity has become associated with the metaphysical style, particularly with Donne's style, and has, in fact, been one of the chief objections to the style.^9 As Miss Bennett says, the- charge of obscurity is ambiguous because the word PO "obscure" can have many meanings. It is difficult to say, sometimes, x^hether the obscurity is due to the reader or to the poet. One cause of obscurity, certainly, is that images clear to the poet's contemporaries are no longer clear. A knowledge of proverbs is especially valuable in removing some of this kind of obscurity because with proverbs we have a clear case of the poet following a contemporary fashion which has fallen out of use. The danger, though, is that the twentieth-century reader will charge Donne with, the obscurity rather than account for it by a change in fashion.

This danger has not always been avoided. R.L. Sharp, for one, explains Donne's obscurit;/ as a result of his desire to express the untraditional.^ But if the obscurity

■^Bennett, p. l£, ^ Ibid. , p. 15>.

^ R . L. Sharp, "Some Light on Metaphysical Obscurity and Roughness," SP, XXXI (193^4-) > 5>03. 109 results from Donne’s use of a proverb which is no longer known to us, then Donne is using a traditional expression which is untraditional for the modern reader. The obscurity, that is, was unintentional. "Holy Sonnet XTTT" is a poem itfhich some have found to be flawed t;y obscurity, others by bad taste. Both charges are removed, I think, by an under standing of Donne's use of proverbs in the poem. In order i to argue that a knowledge of the proverbs used in the poem is necessary for an explication and evaluation, the poem needs to be quoted and analyzed in full:

What if this present were the worlds last night? Marke in my heart, 0 Soule, where thou dost dwell, The picture of Christ crucified, and tell Whether that countenance can thee affright, Tearss in his eyes quench the amasing light, Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc’d head fell, And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell, Which pray'd forgivenesse for his foes fierce spight? No, no; but as in my idolatrie I said to all my prophane mistresses, Beauty, of pitty, foulnesse onelv is A signe of rigour: so I say to thee, To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign'd, This beauteous forme assures a piteous minde. (Gardner, DP, p. 10)

The structure of this sonnet Is clear: in the octave, the speaker, imagining that the end of the xtfcrld has arrived, asks his soul whether it is frightened by the picture of

Christ crucified; in the sestet, the question is answered.

But the proverbs used by Donne in both parts have not been recognized, and they are the keys to a unified interpreta tion.

In the octave, the countenance of Christ is described

in vivid detail: 110

Teares in his eyes quench the amasing light, Blood fills his frown.es, which from his pierc’d head fell.

These lines suggest the proverb, "In the Forehead and in the

eye the lecture of the heart (mind) doth lie” (3l) in both

their arrangement and in their sense, which will become

clear.

The sestet has been criticized quite severely.

Arnold Stein considers lines 10-12 as typical of ’’frequent

wilful or careless” obscurity in D o n n e . 22 ’’The exasperation

one may feel at failing to grasp the meaning of this" /lines

10-12/, Stein says, "produces literary harshness."23 Louis

Martz regards the octave as brilliant, but adds: "Unfortunate

ly, the sestet of this sonnet is unworthy of this opening: the reference tc ’all my prophane mistresses’ is in the worst of taste: there is almost a tone of bragging here,

Neither of these views seems tenable once the lines are

explicated, which neither critic attempts.

The first words of line 9 answer emphatically the

question of the octave: "no, no; . . . ." Then the speaker begins tc set up a contrast with the spiritual or religious mood of the octave. He refers to "idolatrie" in the past

tense. In this earlier, sinful state, he had several "pro

phane mistresses," and said tc all of.them, "Beauty, of

22 "Donne's Harshness and the Elizabethan Tradition," SP, XL I ( 1 9 W , 398. 2/Ibid., p. 393.

2^ The Poetry of Meditation, pp. 83-81;.. Ill pitty, foulnesse onely is / A s igne of rigour.’' The sense of what he said to his mistresses can escape a modern reader, for Donne has here compressed three proverbs into one sen tence. It is simplest to consider the last one first.

"Foulnesse onely is / A signe of rigour” appears to be based on the proverb, "He cannot be Virtuous that is not rigorous"

(2l|5s). This proverb suggests the sense of "rigour" in the poem. "Rigour" in a profane mistress would be a sign of virtue, according to the proverb, but it would be undesirable, a "foulnesse." Beauty, not foulness or ugliness, is desir able in a profane mistress, because "Beauty and chastity

(honesty) seldom meet" (12). The speaker has set up the following parallel: Beauty (which is seldom chaste) is a sign of pity. Foulness is a sign of virtue. The sense of

"pity" is clear from the proverb, "Pity is akin to love"

(188). With the help of these three proverbs, we can under stand lines 10-12 thus: I said to all my profane mistresses, beauty is a sign of pity (love), foulness is a sign of rigor (virtue). This was the way the speaker regarded beauty and virtue in his state of idolatry. He then says to his sduI, "so I say to thee," that the statements are still valid, only not in the same sense. The speaker is no

longer in a state of idolatry; he now fears God and contem plates the picture of Christ crucified. Unlike the counte nances of the profane mistresses, Christ’s countenance is not i beautiful literally, with tears in his eyes and blood filling 112 the frowns in his forehead. It is beautiful, though, when

one reads the lecture of the heart through the eyes, which ar9 filled with tears for men, and through the forehead, which is covered with the blood shed for men. Christ's countenance is not foul or ugly when one reads the heart through it, and therefore he is not rigorous, but forgiving.

His pity is also love, but not the kind of "love" signified by the merely physical beauty of the women in the speaker's former state. The statements he had made to these mistresses are still true, but on a much higher level, a level reached through the paradox of Christ's countenance, which is ugly

only on the superficial level. The speaker suggests the paradox in line 11 where he argues that the picture could not be ugly, for it is Christ's, not a wicked spirit's.

He then applies the statement to Christ: "This beauteous forme assures a piteous minde."

There is not a wilful or careless' obscurity in this poem. Donne is working with language and ideas which xvould have been quite■familiar to his contemporaries. He is working quite subtly and allusively, it is true, but we expect this of Donne, The lines may indeed be exasperating, but the;/ do yield meaning. Any harshness a modern reader hears in these lines is created, I would argue, not by

Donne's careless obscurity but by our unfamiliarity with his sources. Why one should consider a reference to "prophane mistresses" as being in the "worst of taste," especi

ally in one of Donne's religious poems, is difficult to 113 understand. To describe the tone as one of bragging, as

Martz does, one has to read the line as an autobiographical, true statement. But since the speaker is recalling what any man might have said who was in a state of idolatry, worshipping physical beauty--that is, since the speaker is using a proverb or proverbs, one should be-©specially reluc tant, I think, to read the lines as autobiography. Moreover, the tone is not one of bragging but of logical argument, based on a paradox, for the purpose of assuring the soul of

Christ’s pity.

Sometimes Bonne’s obscurity has been attributed to his learning, tc his knowledge of Classical or Renaissance philosophy, for example. The danger here is that we exagger ate Donne's learning because, as C. 3. Lewis says, there is o so little overlap with our own.1-^ This absence of an overlap is nowhere more evident than ’with proverbs, and it has often led readers to concentrate more on Donne’s, complex ities than on his simplicities. The simplicities, in this case proverbs, may be complexities for us because of changing fashions in expression, but we should admit that Donne's contemporaries might, have read him differently. To illustrate, in a recent study of Donne by A. Alvarez heavy emphasis is placed on Donne's intellect and his originality, without any indica tion that often Donne borroi\red ideas and language from the

p £ ’■-'"Donne and Love Poetry in the Seventeenth Century," Seventeenth Century Studies Presented to Sir Herbert Grierson ('Oxford, 193^9, p. 6b. Ilk man in the street. Alvarez says:

. . . Donne xtfas not only one of the -most supremely intelligent poets in' the language, he was also the first Englishman to write verse in a way that re flected the whole complex activity of intelligence. A number of Elizabethan poets embodied the philo sophical truths of their period in verse of con siderable elegance and power. But Donne created a poetic language of thought, a mode of expression which so took for granted the intellectual tone and preoccupations of his time that it made of them, as it were, the stage on which the intimate give-and-take of personal poetry was played. He was, in short, the first intellectual realist in poetry.26

If more than a little of Donne's thought and language was conventional, as I have demonstrated in Part II, and if much of his realism arises from his drawing upon common materials, then a picture such as Alvarez draws is exaggerated.

It would be easier to discuss Alvarez’s view if he had demon strated the basis for it. But he assumes that Donne was

"dealing in compelling poetic terms with the intellectual adult's full experience in all its Immediacy"^? and then goes on to discuss the "school" of Donne. He quotes an excerpt from a poem by Herbert of Cherbur;/, and remarks that it is like a poem by Donne in that "to understand the poem fully the reader is expected to come fully prepared, knowing enough philosophy not to have to strain after the references." °

Donne's reader was expected to understand many references which we have to strain after, but these references were perhaps less frequently to philosophy and esoteric intellec-

The School of Donne (New York, 1961), pp. 12-13.

^ ^ lb id. , p. £l. ^ I b i d . , p. 6)4.. 115 tual matters than Alvarez assumes.

There are some well known lines from "The G-ood- morroWj" for example, which have been taken as evidence of

Donne’s knowledge of epistemolcgy or of optics. The lines are;

M y face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares, And true plalne hearts doe in the faces rest (Gardner, ESS, p. 70j lines 15-16 ) Hunt comments on these lines as followTs:

According to a standard theory the experience of love begins with the physical sensation of the sight of a beautiful woman, and the arrival of the image of the woman at the eye of the lover initiates a specific psychobiological process . which results in love. After the image strikes the lover’s eye it is conveyed to the heart. As it lodges there, it heats the heart and releases the "spirits" in the blood, which mediate between the body and the soul. This release of the spirits activates the soul, which is seated in the heart, and conveys to it the apprehension of the woman which the senses have received; and thus the rational faculties of the soul become involved in an experience which began with bodily sensation. The resultant motion of the soul opens the pores of the body and allows the spirits and the soul to "transpire." In this way the love experienced by the soul is manifested in the lover's face.29

This theory which Hunt summarizes from The Courtier is not, he says, being expounded by Donne, but he believes that some of It lies behind lines 15-16 of "The Good-morrow," and it does account for the concreteness of the Images.30 jf Hunt is right, then it is easy for the reader to be left marveling

OQ ''Donne 1 s Poetry, pp. 62-53.

3°Ibid., p. 63. 116 at Donne’s knowledge of the "psychob iological process" and his ability to treat it artistically. The reader is left with a picture of Donne as one of the "most supremely intel

ligent poets in the language."

Perhaps Donne knew and accepted the theory described

.by Hunt, but it is not necessary to think so in order to understand these lines. Line l£ is quite possibly a form of

the proverb, "To look Babies in another’s eyes" (10), which means "To see the small images of oneself reflected in the

pupils of another’s eye." It appeared in Elizabethan

literature at least by 1565, about six years before Donne was born. The proverb may have had some relation to the

theory, but this seems doubtful since the proverb is a

truth of experience. Nor Is it necessary to go to Renais

sance philosophy for the explanation of line 16. Perhaps

more common than the notion that the- soul transpires through

the pores of the body was the proverb, "The Pace is the

index of the heart (mind)" (8l), which seems to be the idea

Donne is expressing. Its use by John Withals in 1 5 % is a

kind of prose statement of line 16: "Your face doth test ifie

what you be inwardly.Hven If a reader were unwilling

to grant that the proverbs were the source for these lines,

he might admit that they have equal claim. If he did admit

this, he would be less like I;,' to use the lines as an example

of Donne’s knowledge of philosophy, or as an example of his

-^Tilley, Dietionary, B8 .

32Tilley, Diet ionary, FI. 117 knowledge of Renaissance optics, as one writer d o e s .33 would seem reasonable in this case to accept the more common source, the proverb, as the one Donne used. The consequence, of course, is that, we cannot here imagine Donne expecting his readers to come to the poem knowing enough philosophy to avoid having to strain after the references. They would have been much better equipped for most o^ his poems if they knew the current proverbs, as they no doubt did. While it is true that all critics from Dr. Johnson to Miss Joan Bennett have, as Helen White says, agreed that the distinctive trait of metaphysical poetry is its intellectual emphasis,-"! jst this should not blind us to the simplicities in Donne's common language.

33m . M. Mahood, Poetry and Humanism, pp. 93-91+* Miss Mahood believes that Donne's deep TnFerest in the science of optics may explain why eye images abound in the Songs and Sonnets.

3^-The' Me taphys leal Poets, p. 7 h . 118

CONCLUSION

Donne uses proverbs in his poetry to a considerable extent, as Part II of this study demonstrates. In simple numerical terms, he uses 26? proverbs in 352 different instances. Of a total of 19i| poems, counting by Grierson's edition, there are 95 in which I found no proverbs. This raw figure is misleading, however, since two particular groups of poems had fewest proverbs: the BpIgbams, where I found proverbs in 2 of 19 epigrams, and the Verse Letters, where proverbs appeared in 9 poems out of 35- By contrast, proverbs are used in of 55 Songs and Sonnets, in 17 of

20 elegies, and in 8 of 19 Holy Sonnets. In other itfcrds,

If we subtract the Epigrams and Verse Letters, there are

only 52 poems in which no proverbs are found; proverbs appear in nearly half of the Holy Sonnets, in two-thirds of the Songs and Sonnets, and in more than three-fourths of the Elegies. In spite of the many difficulties in establishing dates for particular poems, one can say that proverbs are used throughout Donne's poetry, early and late. The Elegies, the first three Satyres, and one group of the Songs and

Sonnets have been placed before 1602, and the remaining

Songs and Sonnets from 1602-1605. Sixteen of the Holy 119 Sonnets have been dated in 1609, the "Hymne to God, my Gcd,

in my sicknesse" has been dated in 1612, and the Anniversaries have been dated in 1611-1612.^- Proverbs are used in all these groups of poems, and in the single poems named. They are used in some of his finest poems, like "The Canoniza tion," and in the less inspired ones, like "The Jeat Ring

Sent." Donne's use of proverbs may be regarded, then, as a persistent stylistic trait-. Because the use of proverbs in poetry is an outworn convention, however, a veil has been drawn between the modern reader and this aspect of Donne's style. The modern reader, therefore, could study proverbs

"that he may grow familiar with them and forget them, that he may clear and intensify his sense of what alone has permanent value, the poet's individuality and the art in which it is ^expressed, "

Once we recognize the presence of so much conven tional language and thought in Donne's poetry, we are better able to appreciate his true originality. One of his chief

sources, proverbs, was available to everyone and was used by preachers, dramatists, satirists, and lyric poets. Much work remains to be done on the use of the proverb in Renais

sance literature, but a glance at the tradition as it is now known to us permits a preliminary evaluation of Donne's

^For the dating of the Songs and Sonnets, the Elegies, the Satyres, and the Divine Poems, see Gardner, ESS and DP j passim"! For the Ann ive rsar ie s~ see Manle;/, pp. • 2 Grierson, II, vi. 120 position. Donne is within the tradition, and yet, like

Shakespeare, stands apart because of the artistry with which he uses proverbs. Although the use of the proverb was dis cussed and encouraged by Renaissance rhetoricians, it does not seem safe to conclude that Donne was influenced strongly by them. There were many other possible sources, especially the drama, from which Donne might have learned much about the use of proverbs. The way Shakespeare integrates the proverb into a dramatic context seems much closer to Donne's practice than the rather mechanical approach of the rhetori cians like Thomas Wilson.

Proverbs contribute to Donne's style in various ways. Often he alludes to a proverb, either quite directly or by compressing the proverb into a word or two. Because of the widespread popularity of proverbs in the late six teenth and early seventeenth centuries, it seems unlikely that even the most fleeting allusion to a proverb escaped his intended audience.Sometimes Donne amplifies the proverb by elaborating upon the idea or the imager;/. Sometimes he uses the proverb as a kind of authoritative conclusion tc an argument, treating the proverb as the testimony of man kind. It is difficult to say when Donne himself accepts a proverb as true, since he does use as testimony in different poems proverbs which are themselves contradictory, such as

"Comparisons are odious" (35) j and "Nothing is good or bad but by comparison" (l8l). Although at times Donne seems to be relying upon a proverb to furnish ideas or imagery where 121 inspiration is lacking, generally he shapes the proved

to fit the context of the particular poem. The flexibility

with which he treats proverbs is evident when one examines his use of the same proverb in different poems.

Proverbs contribute to Donne's style in other ways,

apart from the characteristic uses of allusion, amplifica

tion, and authority. Because the proverb has a rather fixed

form, some elements of parallelism, paradox, ellipsis, and

alliteration in Donne's poetry can be traced tD the proverbs he was using.

Our understanding of two frequently mentioned

aspects of Donne's style, common language and obscurity, is

increased in the light of his use of proverbs. The proverb

is by nature, composed of common language, or plain diction,

and therefore part of Donne's common language is accounted

for bj his use of so many of them. Furthermore, the proverb

is primarily an oral rather than a literary form, and Donne's

conversational tone was probably much stronger for his con

temporaries than it is for us. Paradoxically, some of

Donne's obscurity, for us, is due to his use of common

language, the language of proverbs which we no longer speak. 122

PREFACE TO PART II

Part II is a list of all the proverbial material which I have identified In Donne's poetry. The proverbs are arranged alphabetically according to the form which appears in either Tilley’s Dietionary or in The Oxford Dic tionary of English Proverbs. The letter and number in parentheses following each proverb are those In Tilley.

Page numbers are given if the proverb was located In ODEP.

Under each proverb are the relevant lines ^rom Donne’s poetry. I do not have the same certitude about each identi

fication, and the reader may prefer to regard some of the

proverbs as suggested sources rather than as positive identi

fication. I have, as I said, preferred to err on the side

of Inclusiveness. For most of the proverbs, however, identi

fication seems certain. Following the alphabetical listing of the proverbs,

there is an index arranged according to the titles of the—

poems in which these are found.

I would like to have included some of the other

appearances of the proverbs in Renaissance literature which

are listed in Tilley. There is no other way to indicate

the widespread use of the proverbs and the ways other Renais

sance writers used them. Often the proverb had appeared 123 long before Donne's time. But considerations of space made the inclusion of such information impractical, and it is

easily accessible in Tilley. For some proverbs, the first

appearance listed in Tilley is in one of Donne's poems.

These proverbs are indicated by an asterisk.

I have used the following abbreviations in Part II:

A John Donne: The Anniversaries, ed. Frank Manley

DP John Donne: The Divine Poems, ed, Helen Gardner

ESS The Elegies and The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne, ed. Helen Gardner

_P The Poems of John Donne, 2 vols., ed. H.J.C. Grierson

ODEP The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs Part II

PROVERBIAL MATERIAL IN DONNE'S POETRY

1. ABSENCE sharpens love, presence strengthens it. (ODEP

A Valediction: of the Booke

How great love is, presence best tryall makes, But absence tryes how long this love will bee;

ESS, p. 6 8 , lines 57-58

2 . Old AGE is full of infirmities. (AJ2) AGE breeds aches. (A6 6 )

The Second Anniversary

. . . threatened with the rage Of sickness, or their true mother, Age.

A, p. 97, lines 177-178

3. An AGUE in the spring is physic for a king, (A79)

The First Anniversary

And, as men thinks, that Agues physick are, And th'Ague being spent, giue ouer care, So thou, sicke world, mistak'st thy sel.fe to bee Well, when alas, thou'rt in a Letargee.

A, p. 6 8 , lines 21-2,5

5. AGUES (Sicknesses) come on horseback but go ax^ay on fo (A8 3 ) Iioly Sonnet XIX

So my devout fitts come and go axtfay Like a fantastique Ague: 125 DP, p. 16, lines 12-13

5. Autumnal AGUES are long or mortal. (A 81).)

The Autumnal1

ESS, pp. 27-28

6 . ALL are of the same dust. (A119)

Elegie upon the untimely death of the Incomparable Prince He nr 77

But now this faith is heresie: we must Still stay, and vexe our great-grand-mother, Dust.

P, p. 268, lines I4.3—U^-i-

Epithalamion V: Her Apparrelling

. , . since wee which doe behold. Are dust, and ucrmes, ’tis just Our objects be the fruits of wormes and dust;

P, p. 137, lines l52-15'i+

7. Like ANGEL visits. (ODEP, p. 10)

Aire and Angells

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angells affect us oft, and worship’d bee:

ESS, p. 75, lines 3-1*

8 . An APE is an ape, a varlet is a varlet, though the-/ be clad in silk or scarlet. (A262)

An APE is an ape though clad in scarlet (gold). (A263)

On His Mistris

Richly cloth’d Apes are call’d Apes,

ESS, p. 2k, line 31 126 9. As wise as an APE. (A269)

The Progresse of the Soule: XLVI

It quickned next a toyfull Ape,

And wisest of that kinde, the first true lover was.

P, p. 313> lines I4.5 i-ij.6O

The Progresse of the Soule: XLVIII

This Ape, though else through-valne, in this was wise,

P, p. 3llj., line U?3

10. To look BABIES in another's eyes. (B8)

The Extasie

And pictures on our eyes to get Was all our propagation.

ESS, p. E9, lines 11-12

The G 00d.-1r.0rrow

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,

ESS, p. 70, line 15>

Witchcraft by a Picture

I fixe mine eye on thine, and there Pitty my picture burning in thine eye, My picture drown'd in a transparent teare, When I looke lower I esple;

ESS, p. 37? lines 1 — Ip

11. As naked as they were BOHN. (.3137) cf. 238

Satyre I Kate vertue, though shee be naked, and bare? At birth, and death, our bodies naked are 127 And till our Soules be unapparrelled Of bodies, they from blisse are banished. Mans first state was naked.

P, p. lij.6 , lines Lj.l-J4.il.

12. BEAUTY and chastity (honesty) seldom meet. (BI6 3 )

The Second Anniversary

And shes made peace, .for no peace is like this, That beauty and chastit?/ together kisse:

A, p. 103, lines 3&3-3&U

13. BEAUTY is but skin-deep. (B170)

The Undertaking

But he who lovelinesse within Hath found, all outward loathes. For he who colour loves, and skinne, Loves but their oldest clothes.

ESS, p. 57> lines 13-16

11+. A mad BEDLAM. (B199) / The Will

. . . my writen rowles Of Morall counsels, I to Bedlam give:

ESS, p. 55, lines 38-39

15. Where the BEE sucks honey the spider sucks poison. (B208)

Twicknam Garden

But 0, selfe traytor, I do bring The spider love, which transubstantiates all, And can convert Manna to gall,

ESS, p. 83, lines 5-7 16. The BETTER the worse. (B333)

The Crosse

From mee, no Pulpit, nor misgrownded law. Nor scandall takes, shall this Crosse withdraw, It shall not, for it cannot; for the losse Of this Crosse, were to mee another Crosse: Better were worse, for no affliction, No Crosse is so extreme, as to have none,

DP, p. 26, lines 9-lij.

17. BLACK will take no other hue. (Blj.36) To make BLACK white. (BJL|1|0)

Holy Sonnet IV

Oh my blacke Soule! . . .

Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacks; But who shall give thee that- grace to beginne? Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke, And red with blushing, as thou art with sinne; Or wash thee in Christs blood, which hath the might That being red, it dyes red soules to white,

DP, p. 7, lines 9-lij.

The Expostulation

Whilst he, black wretch, betray*d each simple word Wee spake, unto the cunning of a third.

ESS, p. 9!oj lines 37-33.

18. To make BLACK white. (BijijO)

The Anagram

Who, mightier then the sea, makes Moores seem white,

ESS, p. 22, line ij.6

19. BLIND men can judge no colors. (ODEP, p. 5l)

The First Anniversary 129 Sight Is the noblest sense of any one, Yet sight hath, onely color to feed on, And Colour is decayd: summers robe growes Duskie, and like an oft dyed garment showes.

A, p. 78, lines 353-356

20. The BLOOD of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. (Blj5?)

The Second Anniversary

Vp to those Martyrs, who did Calmely bleed Oyle to th'Apostles Lampes, dew to their seed.

A, p. 102, lines 351-352

2 1 . BLUSHING- (Bashfulness) is virtue's color (is a sign of grace ) . (BI4.8O)

The Second Anniversary

. . . her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in-her cheekes, and so distlnckly wrought, That one might almost say, her bodis thought,

A, p. 99, lines 2[jlj.-2l;.6

22. The BODY is the prison of the soul, (BL|.97)

The Second Anniversary Thinke in how poore a prison thou didst lie After, enabled but to sucke and crie.

A, p. 96. lines 173-l?i|

Shse, whose fa ire body no such prison was,

A, p. 99, line 221

The Progresse of the Soule: VII

This soule to whom Luther, and Mahomet were Frisons of flesh; . . .

P, p. 297, lines 66-67 130 The Progresse of the Soule: XXV

How swome a prison in a prison put, And now this Soule in double walls was shut, Till melted with the Swans digestive fire, She left her house the fish, and vapour'd forth;

P, p. 305, lines 2kl-2kk■

Progresse of the Soule: XXXVIII

This Soule, noxi? free from prison, and passion,

P, p. 310, line 371

23. As dry (hard) as a BONE. (B5l5)

The Litanie: IV. The Trinity

0 Blessed glorious Trinity Bones to Philosophy, but mi Ike to faith.

DP, p. 17, lines 28-29

2k- He is a blind BUZZARD. (B792) LOVE is blind. (L506)

Loves Diet

Thus I reclaim'd by buzard love, to flye At what, and when, and how, and where I ehuse;

ESS, p. 1.6, lines 25-26

25. A CAUDLE (torch) lights others and consumes itself. (G39)

The Canonization

We're Tapers too, and at our owne cost die,

ESS, p. 7l[, line 21

2 6 . To go out like a CANDLE in a snuff. (Cii.9)

/image and Dream/ 131 For even as first likes Taper is a snuffe

ESS, p. 53, line 21;

27. As straight (tall) as a CEDAR. (C20?)

Sapho to Philaenis

Thou art not soft, and clsare, and strait, an.d faire, As Down, as Stars, Cedars, and Lillies are,

P, p. 121;, lines 21-22

28. High CEDARS fall (are shaken) when lev; shrubs remain (are scarcely move d) . (C208)

As straight (tall) as a CEDAR. (C207)

Upon the Annunciation and Passion falling upon one day. 1608

She sees a Cedar plant it selfe, and fall,

DP, p. 29, line 8

29. The CHAIN is no stronger than its weakest link. (ODEP, p. 87)

The Second Anniversary Shee who Xiras such a Chaine, as Fate emploies To bring mankind, all Fortune it enioies, So fast, so euen wrought, as one would thinke, No Accident, could threaten any linke,

A, p. 96, lines ll;3-li;6

30. As changeable as a CHAMELEON. (C221)

On His MIstris Men of France, changeable Camelions,

ESS, p. 21;, line 33

31. There is CHANGE of all things. (C233) 132 CHANGE is sweet. (C229)

Var iety All tilings doe willingly in change delight.

ESS3 p. 10U, line 9

Change

Change'is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life, and eternity.

ESS, p. 20, lines 35'-36

32. The COCK is the countryman's clock. (Clr.85)

Epithalamion: V The masquers come too late, and'I thinke, will stay, Like Fairies, till the Cock croxv them away,

P, p. 129, lines 67-68

33. The COCKATRICE slays by night only. (CLj.95>) Crush (Kill) the COCKATRICE in the egg. (C!;96)

The Perfume

Though he had wont to search with glazed e7/es, As though he came to kill a Cockatrice,

ESS, p. 7, lines 7-8

3*1. As many COLORS as there are in the rainbow. (C5>19)

The First Anniversary

Swadling the new-borne earth, God seemd to like, That she should sport herselfe sometimes, and play, To mingle, and vary colours euery day. And then, as though she could not make enow, Himselfe his various Rainbow did allow.

A, p. 78, lines 3i+8-3.32 133 35. COMPARISONS are odious. (C576)

The Comparison

Leave her* and I will leave comparing thus, She, and comparisons are odious.

ESS, p. 6 , lines 53-5^1

3^. CONTRARIES being set the one against the other appear more evident. (C63O)

Holy Sonnet XIX

Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one:

DP, p. 15, 1 ine_ 1 . _

37. The CORRUPTION of the best is the worst. (C668)

The First Anniversary

For, before God had made vp all the rest, Corruption entred, and deprau'd the test: It seis'd the Angels, and then first of all The world did in her Cradle take a fall,

A, p. 73, lines 193-196

38. It is an ill COUNSEL that has no escape. (C 6 9 3)

The Autumnall

Yong Beauties force your love, and that's a Rape, This doth but counsaile, yet you cannot scape.

ESS, p. 27, lines 3-I4.

39. He that will in COURT dwell must needs curry favel /favor/, ( C 72JL{.)

The Will

My truth to them, who at the Court doe live;

E S S , p. 51l, line 11 131;. ho. CRETANS are liars (Use craft against Cretans). (C822) Grecian FAITH. (F31) Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus

Change thy name: thou art like Mercury in stealing., but lyest like a Greeke.

P, p. 78

No CROSS no crown. (C839)

The Crosse

Better were worse, for, no affliction, No Crosse is so extreme, as to have none.

DP, p. 26, lines 13-ill-

Hymne to God, my God, in my Sicknesse

So, in his purple wTrapp’ d receive mee Lord, • By these his thornes give me his other Crounej

DP, p. 50, lines 26-27

li2. Still CUPID’S arrows stick near to the heart. (C913)

Variety

His sinewy bowr, and those immortall darts Wherewith heT is wont to bruise resisting hearts.

ESS, p. 106, lines 59-60 k-3. CUSTOM (Use) is another (a second) nature. (C932) CUSTOM makes sin no sin. (C931+) The Relique

Which nature, injur’d by late law, sets free:

ESS, p. 90, line 30

The Progresse of the Soule: XXI Man, till they tooke laws which made freedoms lesse, Their daughters, and their sisters did ingresse: Till now unlawfull, therefore ill, 1twas not.

P, p. 303, lines 201-203

Loves Progress

But if I love it, ’tis because 'tis made By our new Nature, Use, the soule of trade.

ESS, p. 17, Iines-i3'-l6 hb. The DANGER (river) past and God forgotben. (D31)

The Litanie: XVI

Prom needing danger, to bee good,

DP, p. 21, line 136

The DAY has eyes, the night has ears. (D62)

Breake of Day

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;

ESS, p. 35, line 7 lj.6. DEATH at the one door and heirship at the other. (DI3 8 )

The First Anniversary

Wei dy'de the world, that we might liue to see This world of wit. in bis Anatomee: No euill wants his good: so wilder heyres Bedew their fathers Toombs with forced teares, Whose state requites their los:

A, p. 65, lines 1-5

U7 . ' He has not lived that lives not after DEATH. (Dl53)

Holy Sonnet X 136 One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die,

DP, p. 9, lines 13-11+

The First Anniversary

As oft as thy feast sees this Twidowed earth, Will yearely celebrate thy second birth, That is, thy death. For though the soule of man Be got when man is made, 'tis borne but than When man doth die. Our body's as the wombe, And as a Mid-wife, death directs it home.

A, pp. 80-8l, lines [ji+9-l+5>l+ i+8. He that fears DEATH lives not. (D1553

Holy Sonnet X

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadfuil, for, thou art not soe,

DP, p. 9, lines 1-2

1+9. DEATH'S day is doomsday. (Dl6l)

The Litanie: XXII

In th'houre of death, the'Eve of last judgement day, Deliver us from the sinister way.

DP, p. 21+, lines 197-198

5To 0 • pay one's DEBT to nature, (D168)

Holy Sonnet XVII

Since she whom I lovd, hath payd her last debt To Mature, and to hers, and my good is dead, And her soule early into heaven ravished, Wholy in heavenly things my mind is sett.

DP, p. ll+, lines 1-1; 5i. It is easier to DESCEND than ascend. (D20if)

The First Anniversary

Loth to goe vp the hill, or labor thus To goe to heauen, we make heauen come to vs.

A, p. 76, lines 201-282

52. DESIRE has no rest. (D211) DESIRE torments us a hope comforts us. (D212)

The Token

Send me some token, that my hope may live, Or that my easeless thoughts may sleep and rest; Send me some honey to make sweet my hive, That in my passion I may hope the best.

ESS, p. 10?, lines 1-Ji

53. DESPAIR (Love) makes cowards courageous. (D216) NECESSITY makes the coward grow courageous. (1?62) The Calme

Whether a rotten state, and hope of gaine, Or to disuse mee from the queasie paine Of being belov'd, and loving, or the thirst Of honour, or faire death, out pusht mee first, I lose my end: for here as well as I A desperate may live, and a cox^ard die.

P, p. 179, lines 39-kk

51i. The DEVIL is known by his claws (cloven feet, horns). (D2£2)

Loves Progress

Rather set out below; practise m;/ art, Some symetrie the foote hath with that part Which thou dost seeke, . . . Least subject to disguise and change it is; Men -say, the devill never can change his.

ESS, p. 10, lines 73-78 Song

Or who cleft the Divels foot

ESS, p. 29, line Ij.

55. DO as you would be done to. (D395)

Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus

'Tis sinne to doe, In this case, as thou wouldst be done unto, To beleeve all:

P, P. 78

56. As innocent (harmless) as a DOVE. (D572) As loving (tame, patient) as a DOVE (pigeon). (D573)

His Parting from Pier

Yet Love, thou'rt blinder than thy self in this, To ven my Dove-like friend for mine amiss:

ESS, p. 97, lines 29-30

Epithalamion: On the Lady Elisabeth . . .

Thou marryest every yeare The Lirique Larke, and the grave whispering Dove,

P, p. 127, lines 5-6

57. As lost as a DROP of water in the sea. (D613)

Ills Parting from Her

Or as I'had watcht one drop in a vast stream,

ESS, p. 97, line 27

58. As dull as a DUTCHMAN. (0651j.) The DUTCHMAN drinks his buttons off, the English doublet and away. (D655) 139 The DUTCHMAN drinks pure wine in the morning, at noon wine without water, in the evening as it comes from the butt, (D656) On His Mistris

But none of these, Nor spungie h7/drcptique Dutch, shall thee displease,

ESS, p. 21]., lines i*l-L^2

59. An EAGLE doss not hatch a dove. (E2)

The Canonisation

And wee in us finde the’Eagle and the Dove;

ESS, p. 71*, line 22

60. Tc have an EAGLE’S eye. (E6)

The Litanie: VIII. The Prophets

Thy Eagle-sighted Prophets too,

DP, p. 19, line 61*

61. EARTH must go to earth (Dust to dust). (E30) The EARTH produces all things and receives all again. (E31)

The Dissolution

Shee’is dead; And all which die To their first Elements resolve;

ESS, p. 86, lines 1-2

To Mr. Tilman after he had taken orders

And so the heavens which beget all things here, And the earth our mother, which these things doth beare,

DP, p. 33, lines 51-52

62. EAST and west (Extremes) become the same. (Eljli.) Upon the Annuntiation

All this, and all betweene, this day hath shoune, Th1 Abridgement of Christs story, which makes one (As in plaine Maps, the furthest West is Hast) Of th'Angels AVE, and Consuramatum est.

DP, p. 29, lines 19-22

Or as creation he had made, as God, With the last judgement, but one period His imitating Spouse would joyne in one Manhoods extremes: He shall come, he is gone:

DP, p. 30, lines 37-1+0

Hymn to God, my God, in my sicknesse

I joy, that in these straits, I see ray West: For, though the ire currants yeeld returne to none, What shall my West hurt me? As West and East In all flatt Maps (and I am one) are one, So death doth touch the Ressurrection.

DP, p. 50, lines 11-15

63. The EKD of our good begins our evil. (Ell8) The HUD of passion is the beginning of repentence. (E119)

Cales and Guyana

That one things end doth still beginne a Hew.

P, P. 76

65. ENVY (Calumny) shoots at the fairest mark (flowers, virtue). (E175) FAME is but the breath of the people and that often unwhole s ome. (F^6)

Obsequies to the Lord Harrington

But till thou should’st successefully advance Thine armes ’gainst forraine enemies, which are Both Envy, and acclamations popular, (For, both these engines equally defeate, Though by a divers Mine, those which are great,)

P, p. 277, lines 196-200 65.-* Better be ENVIED than pitied. (E177)

To & . T, W,

Men say, and truly, that they better be Which be envyed then pit-tied: therefore I, Because I wish thee best, doe thee envie:

P, p. 20l±, lines 9-10

Julia

Harke newes, 'o envy, thou shalt heare descryy'd My Julia; who as yet was ne'r envy'd.

ESS, p. 100, lines 1-2

66. EXAMPLES teach more than precepts. (.E213)

The Second Anniversary

Shee v;ho all Libraries had thoroughly red At home, in her owne thoughts, and practised So much good as would make as many more: Shee whose example they must all implore, Who would or doe, or thinks well, and confesse, That aie the vertuous Actions they expresse, Are but a new, and worse edition, Of her some one thought, or one action: Shee, who in th'Art of knowing Heauen, was grower Here vpon Earth, to such perfection, That shee hath, suer since to Heauen shee came, (In a far fairer print,) but read the same: Shee, shee, not satisfied with all this waite, (For so much knowledge, as would cuer-fraite Another, did but Ballast her) is gone, As well t'enioy, as yet perfect!one, And cals vs after her, in that shee tooke, (Taking herselfe) our best, and worthiest booke.

A, p. 101, lines 303-320

67. Every EXTREMITY (extreme) is a vice (fault). (E221;)

The Autumnall

I hate extreames; yet I had rather stay With Tombs, then Cradles, to wears out a da;y. 11:2 ESS, p. 28, lines k$-br6

68. The EYE is the window of the heart (mind). (E231) The EYE sees not itself but by reflection. (E231a)

The Canonization

Who did the whole worlds soule extract, and drive Into the glasses of your eyes So made such mirrors, and such spies, That they did all to you epitomize, Countries, Townes, Courts:

ESS, pp. 7k~75, lines IpO-iplj.

Twiclmam Garden

Alas, hearts do not in eyes shine,

ESS, p. 8k, line 23

69. The EYE will be where the love is. (E233) The Message

Send home my long strayd eyes to mee, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee;

ESS, p. 30, lines 1-2

70. As many EYES as Argus. (E25>k)

The Second Anniversary

Hee that charm'd Argus- eies, sweet Mercury, Workes not on her, who now is growen all Ey;

A, p. 97, lines 199-200

The Will

Here I bequeath Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see,

ESS, p. 5k, lines 2-3 71. PAIR face foul heart. (F3) BEAUTY and chastity (honesty) seldom meet. (BI6 3 )

The Expostulation

And must she needs be false because she's fa ire? Is it your beauties marke, or of your youth. Or your perfection, not to study truth?

ESS, p. 94, lines I4.-6

72. A good FACE needs no paint. (F7)

Holy Sonnet XVIII ■

Shox-r me deare Christ, thy Spouse, so bright and cleare What! is it she, which on the other shore Goes richly painted?

DP, p. 15, lines 1-3

73. FAIR without but foul within. (F29)

The Anagram

Women are all like Angels; the fa ire be Like those which fell to worse; but such a sbee Like to good Angels, nothing can impaire: 'Tis lesse griefe to be foule, then to'have beene faire.

ESS, pp. 21-22, lines 29-32

71}.. FAME is but the breath of the people and that often unwholesome. (Fip6)

The Will

My t ongue t o Fame;

ESS, p. 57}, line 5

75. FEAR and shame much sin does tame. (F132)

Holy Sonnet XIX

So my devout fitts come and go away lllij. Like a fantastique Ague: save that here Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare.

DP, p. 16, lines 12-ll|.

76. FIRE descends not. (F256)

Epithalamion XI: The Good-Night

Pire ever doth aspire,

P, p. ll+O, line 219

77. PIRE is love, and water sorrow. (F260)

The Dissolution

My fire of Passion, sighes of ayre Water of teares, and earthly sad despaire,

ESS, p. 86, lines 9-10

78. As mute as a FISH. (F300)

The Progresse of the Soule: XXIX

Is any kind subject to rape like a fish? Ill unto man, they neither doe, nor wish: Fishers they kill not, nor with noise awake,

P, p. 306, lines 281-283.

To Sir Henry Wotton Pishes glide, leaving no print where they passe, Nor making sound;

P, p. 182, lines 56-^7

79. The PLY (moth) that plays too long in the candle singes its wings at last. (?39U) Elegie VI: Oh, Let rr.ee not serve ...... so, the tapers beamie eye

. ' % - - ii|5 Amorously twinkling, bee kens the giddie file, Yet burnes his wings; and such the devill is,

P, p. 88, lines 17-19

The Canonization

Call her one, mee another flye,

ESS, p. 71)., line 20

He is doubly fond /foolish/ that justifies his FONDNESS. (P^O) The Triple Foole

I am two fooles, I know, For loving, and for saying -so In whining Poetry;

ESS, p. 52, lines 1-3

81. In the FOREHEAD and in the eye the lecture of the heart (mind) doth lie. (F590)

Holy Sonnet XIII

Marke In my heart, 0 Soule, where thou dost dwell. The picture of Christ crucified, and tell Whether that countenance can thee affright, Teares In his eyes quench the amasing light, Blood fills his frounes. which from his pierc'd head fell, And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell, Which pray'd forgivenesse for his foes fierce spight?

DP, p. 10, lines 2-8

The FACE Is the index of the heart (mind). (FI) A fair FACE must have good conditions. (F5) A blithe HEART makes a blooming visage. (H301)

The Good-morrow

And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,

ESS, p. 70, line 16 82. FORTUNE (Justice) is blind. (F60J+)

His Parting from Her

So blinded Justice doth, when Favorites fall

ESS, p. 97, line 33

Till Fortune, that would rive us, with the deed, Strain her eyes open, and it make them bleed.

ESS, p. 9 8 , lines 61-62

To the Countess of Salisbury

So, though I'am borne without those eyes to live, Which fortune, who hath none her selfe, doth give, Which are, fit meanes to see bright courts and you, Yet may I see you thus, as now I doe;

P, p. 226, lines 79-82

83. FORTUNE (Woman) is constant only in inconstancy. (F6O8 )

His Parting from Her

Declare your self base fortunes Enemy, No less by your contempt then constancy:

ESS, p. 99, lines 91-92

8[i. Great FORTUNE brings with it great misfortune. (F6l0) The higher STANDING (up) the lower (greater) fall. (S823)

His Parting from Her

So blinded Justice doth, when Favorites fall, Strike them, their house, their followers all.

ESS, p. 97, lines 33-3U

85. As wily (crafty) as a FOX. (F629)

Change

Foxes and goats; all beasts change when they please, Shall women, more hot, wily, wild then these, Ik7 Be bound to one man,

ESS, p. 20, lines 16-18

86. A FRIEND is one's second self. (F6 9 6 )

To the Lady Bedford

You that are she and you, that's double shee, In her dead face, halfe of your selfe shall see; Shee was the other part, for so they doe Which build them friendships, become one of two;

P, p. 227, lines l-i|_

87. Have but few FRIENDS though much acquaintance. (F7Ul)

To Mr. I. L. Of that short Roll of friends writ in my heart Which with thy name begins, since their depart,

P, p. 212, lines 1-2

88. Add FUEL to the fire. (F785)

Negative Love

For sense, and understanding may Know, what gives fuell to their fire:

ESS, p. 56, lines 5-6

On Ills Kistris Men of France, . . . Loves fuellers,

ESS, p. 2k, lines 33-35

The Dissolution But that my fire doth with ray fuell groxtf.

ESS, p. 86, line 15 ll|8 89. Take away FUEL take away fire (flame). (F7 8 6 )

To Mr. S. B.

But seeing in you bright sparkes of Poetry, I, though I brought no fuell, had desire With these Articulate blasts to blow the fire.

P, p. 211, lines 12-li;

90. Hasty GAMESTERS oversee /blunder/ themselves. (G26)

The Will

My patience let gamesters share.

ESS, p. $l4s line 2k

91. As lecherous as a GOAT. (GI6 7 )

Change

Foxes and goats; all beasts change when they please, Shall women, more hot, wily, wild then these, Be bound to one man,

ESS, p. 20, lines 16-18

Holy Sonnet IX

If poysonous mineralls, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortall us. If lecherous goats, if serpents envieous Cannot be damn’d; Alas; why should I bee?

DP, p. 8, lines l-[i.

A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day, being the shortest day You lovers, for whose sake, the lesser Sunne At this time to the Goat is runne To fetch new lust, and give it you,

ESS, p. 85, lines 38-1^0

92. GOD is a potter and we are the clay. (GI9 6 ) li+9 The Litanie: I. The Father

My heart is by dejection, clay. And by selfe-murder, red. From this red earth, 0 Father, purge away All vicious tinctures, that new fashioned I may rise up from death, before I'am dead.

DP, p. 16, lines 5-9

93. Those that GOD loves do not live long (The good die young). (G25U Holy Sonnet X

Much pleasure, then from thee /Death/, much more must flow And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,

DP, p. 9, lines 6-7

Slegie on Mistris Boulstred

Now hee /Death/ will seeme to spare, and doth mere wast, Eating the best first, well preserv'd to last.

P. p. 282, lines 10-11

9Ll. As yellow as GOLD. (G280)

The Bracelet . „

Not that in colour it was like thy haire,

ESS, p. 1, line 1

95. GOLD is tried in the fire. (G28l[)

The Autumnall

But now sh.ee's gold oft tried, and ever new. That was her torrid and inflaming time, This is her tolerable Tropique clyme.

ESS, p. 27, line 8

Loves Progress ’ i5o I, when I value gold., may think upon The ductillness, the application, The wholes oneness, the ingenuity, From rust, from soyle, from fyre ever free,

ESS, p. 16, lines 11-llj.

96. Pie that labors and thrives spins GOLD. (G287)

Resurrection, Imperfect

He was all gold when he lay downe,'but rose All tincture, and doth not alone dispose Leaden and iron wills to good, but is Of power to make even sinfull flesh like his,

DP, p. 28, lines 13-16

97. The purest GOLD is most ductile. (G291)

Loves Progress

I, when I value gold, may thinks upon The duct illness, . . .

ESS, p. 16, lines 11-12

98. We must not lock for a GOLDEN life in an iron age. (ODEP, p. 250)

The First Anniversary She that did thus much, and much more could doe, But that our age was Iron, and rusty too,

A, p. 80, lines ij.25>-lj-26

99. GRACE (Nurture) and manners make a man. (G391) NATURE passes nurture. (Nl+7) NURTURE is above (passes) nature. (N357) ART apes nature. (A330)

Epithalamion VII: The Benediction

Raise he ires, and may here, to the worlds end, live 1 5 1 He ires from this King, to take thankes, you, to give, Nature and grace doe all, and nothing Art.

P, p. 138, lines 177-179

100. The GREAT put the little on the hook. (Gij.3U)

The Progresse of the Soule: XXVIII

Exalted she’is, but to the exalters good, As are by great ones,'men which lowly stood. It's rais’d, to be5 the Raisers instrument.and food.

P, p. 306, lines 278-200

101 . The greater GRIEF (sorrow) drives out the less, (Gl±l|6)

The-Broken Heart

All other griefes allow a part To othe^ griefes, and aske themselves but some; They come to us, but us Love draws, He swallows us, and never chawes:

ESS, p.'51, lines 1 1 - ll|

102. GRIEF is lessened when imparted to others. (GiiLj.7) Elegie : Death

If we could sigh out accents, and weepe words, Griefe weares, and lessens, that tears breath affords.

P, p. 281|, lines 3-1+

The Triple Foole

I thought, if I could draw my paines Through Rimes vexation, I should them allay. Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce, For, he tames it, that fetters It in verse. But when I have done so Some man, his art and voice to show, Doth set and sing my paine, And by delighting many, frees againe Griefe, which verse did restraine. To Love and Griefe, tribute of Verse belongs, 1 5 2 But not of such as pleases when Ttis read, Both are increased by such songs: - For both their triumphs so are published,

ESS, p. 52, lines 8-20

103. The greatest HATE proceeds from the greatest love. (H210) The Prohibition

Hate mee, because thy love's too great for mee;

ESS, p. 1|0, line 20

IOI4.. A HEART as hard as a stone (flint, marble). (H311)

A Jeat Ring Sent

Thou art not so black, as my heart, Uor halfs so brittle, as her heart, thou art;

ESS, p. 3 8 , lines 1-2

105. An honest HEART cannot dissemble. (K316)

Witchcraft by a Picture

Though thou retaine of mee' One picture more, yet that will bee, Being in thine oi^ne heart, from all malice free

T? C? O , p. 373 lines 12-lLi.

106. As black (dark) as HELL. (H39?)

Resurrection, imperfect

Who, not content to'enlighten all that dwell On the earths face, as thou, enlightned hell, And made the darke fires languish in that vale,

HP, p. 28, lines 5-7

107. He is gone to his long (last) HOME. (H533) 153 The Autumnal1

I shall ebbe on with them, who home-wand goe,

ESS, p. 28, line 50

10 8 . HONOR will buy no beef. (H573) The Will

/I give/ My brazen medals, unto them which live In want of bread;

ESS, p. 55, lines [}.0-I).l

109. Where there is no HONOR there is no grief (sorrow), (H58l) Great HONORS are great burdens. (H582) HONOR and ease are seldom bedfellows. (K568)

The St orme

(For, Fates, or Fortunes drifts none can soothsay, Honour and misery have one face and way.)

P, p. 175, lines 11-12

/image and Dream/ Honours oppresse weake spirits,

ESS, p. 58, line 7

110. HOPE for the best. (0D5P, p. 303)

The Token

Send me some honey to make sweet my hive, That in my passions I may hope the best.

ESS, p. 107, lines 3-1;.

111 . Soon HOT soon cold. (H732) A Tale of a Citizen and His Wife And heat of taking up, but cold lay downe,

ESS, p. 103# line k3

112. The IROH entered into his soul. (190) As heavy as LEAD. (L13U) As cold as LEAD. (L137)

Resurrection, imperfect

Leaden and iron wills to good,

DP, p. 28, line 15

113. Ke that will not bear the ITCH must endure the smart. (1105) Satyre I

He them to him xvith amorous smiles allures, And grins, smacks, shrugs, and such an itch endures. As prentises, or schoole-boyes which doe know Of some gay sport abroad, ;yet dare not goe.

P, p. 1I4.8 , lines 73-78

Ilk. As white as IVORY. (1109)

The Anagram

Though they be Ivory, yet her teeth are jeat,

ESS, p. 21, line i;

115. As black as JET. (Jlj.9)

The Plea

And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet.

ESS, p. 93, line 15

A Jeat Ring Sent

Thou art not so black, as my heart, 155 ESS, p. 3 8 , line 1

The Anagram

Though they be Ivory, yet her teeth are jeat,

ESS, p . 21, 1 ine Ij.

116. To be out of JOINT. (J75) The First Anniversary

Then, as mankinds, so is the worlds whole frame Quite out of i07/nt, almost created lame:

A, p. 73, lines 191-192

117. JOVE laughs at lovers' perjuries. (J82}

On His Mistris Augure mee better chance, except dreade Jove Thinke it enough for mee, to'have had thy love.

ESS, p. 2l[, lines 55-56

The Expostulation

Or thinke you heaven is deafe, or hath no eyes? Or those it hath, smile at your perjuries?

ESS, p. 9J4., lines 7-8

118. To drink the juice of MANDRAKE (mandragora). (JlOl) The Progresse of the Soule: XVII

Popple she knew, she knew the mandrakes might, And tore up both, and so coold her childs blood;

P, p. 301, lines 167-168

119. Like KING (prince) like people. (K70) Ecclogue

Kings (as their patterne, God) are liberall Not onely in fulnesse, but capacities Enlarging narrow mens to feele and see, And comprehend the blessings they bestow.

P, p. 133, lines i4.I4.-ip7

120. He that would KNOW'what shall be must consider what ha been. (K170) The First Anniversary

Ke which not knowing her sad History, Should come to reade the booke of destiny, How faire and chast, humble and high shee1ad beene, Much promis'd, much perform'd, at net fifteene, And measuring future things, by things before, Should 'turne the leafe to reade, and read no more, Would thinke that eyther destiny mistooke, Or that some leafes were torne out of the booke.

A, p. 814., lines 83-90

121. KNOW thyself.. (K175)

The Second Anniversary

Poore soule in this thy flesh what do'st thou know. Thou know'st thy selfe so little, as thou know'st not, How thou bid'st die, nor how thou wast beget.

A, p. 99, lines 2^-256

Thou art to narrow, wretch, to comprehend Euen thy selfe:

A, p. 99, lines 261-262

What hope haue we to know our selues, when wee Know not the least things, which, for our vse be?

A, p. 100, lines 279-290

122. LABOR in vain is loss of time. (L3) 157 You lose your LABOR. (L9)

The First Anniversary

Let no man say, the world it selfe being dead, rTis labour lost to haue discouered The worlds infirmities, since there is none Aliue to study this dissect lone;

A, p. 69> lines 63-66

123. * Good LAND evil way. (L50)

The Anagram

Beauty is barren oft; best husbands say There is best land, where there is foulest way.

ESS, p. 22, lines 35-36

121^. To sing like a LARK. (L70)

Epithalamion: On the Lady Elizabeth

Thou marryest every yeare The Lirique Larke,

P, p. 127, lines 5-6

125. The more (Many) LAWS, the more (many) offenders (sins). (L117)

The Litanie: XXVI

That living law, the Magistrate Which to give us, and make us physicke, doth Our vices often aggravate,

DP, p. 25} lines 226-228

126. He trembles (quakes, shakes) like an aspen LEAF. (LlJLj.O)

The Apparition

And then poore Aspen wretch, 158

ESS, p. I4.3 , line 11

127. To turn over a new LEAP. (Lllj.6 )

To Sir Henry Goodyere

Who makes the Past, a patterne for next yeare, Turnes no new leafe, but still the same things reads, Seene things, he sees againe, heard things doth heare, And makes his life, but like a paire of beads.

P, p. 1 8 3 , lines 1-L|.

128. LIFE is a pilgrimage. (L2l|9)

Holy Sonnet VI

This is m7/ playes last scene, here heavens appoint My pilgrimages last mile;

DP, p. 7j lines 1-2

To Sir Henry Mott on

Life is a voyage, and in our lifes wayes Countries, Courts, Towns are Rockes, or Remors.es;

P, p. 1 8 0 , line 78

129. LIFE is a span. (L2£l)

Holy Sonnet VI

My spans last inch.

DP, p. 7, line 1;.

The First Anniversary

And as in lasting, so in length is man Contracted to an inch, who was a span.

A, p. 71, lines 135-138 159 130. The LIFE of spies is to know, not he known. (L257)

His Parting from Her ■

Have we not kept out guards, like spie on spie?

ESS, p. 98, line I|_5

131. As swift as LIGHTNING. (L279)

The Second Anniversary

Or see thy flight; which doth our thoughts outgoe So fast, that now the lightning moues hut slow:

A, p. 09, lines 11-12

The Progresse of the Soule

As lightning, which one scarce dares say, he saw 1 Tis so soone gone, (and better proofe the law Of sense, than faith requires) swiftly she flew To a darks and foggie Plot;

P, p. 390, lines 126-129

132. LIKENESS causes liking (love). (L29i|)

Change

Likenesse glues love: Then if soe thou doe, To make us like and love, must I change too?

ESS, p. 20, lines 23-21;

133. By LINK and link the coat of mail is made at last. (L307) The Bracelet

Nor for that seely old moralitie, That as those links are tyed our love should be;

ESS, p, 1, lines 5-6

13^-. Hot LOVE is soon cold. (LI4.8 3 ) 160 Holy Sonnet XIX

As humorous is my contritione As my prophane love, and as soone' forgott: As ridlingly distemperd, cold and hott,- As pra;/ing, as mute; as infinite, as none.

DP, p. 16, lines 5-8

13£. In LOVE there is both dotage and discretion. (Ll+86) LOVE is without reason. (L-517) It is impossible to LOVE and be wise. (L558)

Loves Diet

. . . made it feed upon That which love worst endures, discretion.

ESS, p. 1+5, lines 5-6

136. LOVE asks faith and faith firmness. (Llj. 97)

His Parting from Her

Take therefore all in this: I love so true, As I will never look for less in you.

ESS, p. 100, lines 103-10U

137. LOVE, being jealous, makes a good eye look asquint. (Li-08)

The Message

Yet since there they1have learn'd such 111, That they be Made by thee Fit for no good sight.

ESS, p. 30, lines 3-8

138. LOVE cannot be compelled (forced). (Llq99)

The Autumnal 1

Yong Seauties force your love, and that's a Rape,

ESS, p. 27, line 3 139. LOVE cones by looking (in at the eyes). (L501)

His Parting from Her

Was't not enough that, thou didst dart thy ^ires Into our blouds, inflaming our desires, And made'st sigh and glow, and pant, and burn, And then thyself into our flame did’st turn?

ESS, p. 98, lines 35-38

11+0 . LOVE is a sweet torment. (L505&) LOVE is full of fear (trouble). (L507)

The Canonisation

You, to itfhom love was peace, that now is rage:

ESS, p. 7h, line 39 iia. LOVE is blind. (L506)

Variety

Here love receiv’d immedicable harmes, And was dispelled of his daring armes. A greater want then is his daring eyes,

ESS, p. 105, lines 55-57

The V! ill

If they be blinde, then Love, I give them thee;

ESS, p. 51;, line 1;

His Parting from Her

Oh Love, that fire and darkness should be mixt. Or to thy Triumphs soe strange torments fixt? Is’t because thou thy self art blind, that wee Thy/ Martyrs must no more each other see?

ESS, p. 97, lines 13-16

Yet Love, thou’rt blunder then thy self in this, To vex my Dove-like friend for mine amiss: 162 ESS, p. 97, lines 29-30 llj.2. LOVE is full of fear. (l£07) Holy Sonnet XIX

I durst not view heaven yesterday; and to day In prayers, and flattering speaches I court God: To morrow I quake with true feare of his rod.

DP, p. 16, lines 9-11

His Parting from Her

Or have we left undone some mutual Plight, Through holy fear, that merits thy despight?

ESS,- p. 97, lines 19-20

11*3. LOVE is lawless. (L£o8 )

A Valediction: of my name in the Window

But all such rules, loves magique can undoe,

ESS, p. 61;, line 11

LOVE is sweet in the beginning but sour in the ending. (L513) LOVE'S beginning is fear, middle sin, and end grief and annoyance. (L553>)

Farewell to Love

/Love/ Being had, enjoying it decayes: And thence, What before pleas'd them all, takes but one sense, And that so lamely, as it leaves behinde A kinde of sorrowing dulnesse to the minde. ESS, p. 82, lines 16-20

His Parting from Her

Time shall not lose cur passages; the Spring Shall tell how fresh our love was in beginning: 163 The Summer how it ripened in the eare; And Autumn, what our golden harvests were. The Winter I’ll not think on to spite thee, But count it a lost season, so shall shee.

ESS, p. 99, lines 77-82

The Expostulation

Who could have thought so many accents sweet Form’d into words, so many-sighs should meet-e As from our hearts, so many oathes, and tearss Sprinkled among, (all sweeter by our feares And the divine impression of stolns kisses That seal'd the rest) should now prove empty blisses?

ESS, p. 91*-95, lines 13-18 il*5. LOVE is the touchstone of virtue. (L5l6)

To the Countesse of Huntington

Why love among the vertues is not knowne Is, that love is them all contract in one.

P, p. 1*21, lines 129-130

11+6. LOVE is without reason. (L517) LOVE is blind. (l£06)

Loves Exchange

Give mee thy weaknesse, make mee blinde. Both wayes, as thou and thine, in eies and minde;

ESS, p. 1*6, lines 15-16

11*7. LOVE (Woman, Honor), like a shadow (crocodile, death), flies one following and pursues the fleeing. (L5l8)

To the Countesse of Huntington

Who strives through womans scomes, women to know, Is lost, and seekes his shadow to outgoe;

P, p. 1*19, lines 65-66 161; His Parting from. Her

Since she must go, and I must mourn, come Night, Environ me with darkness, whilst I write: Shadow that hell unto me, which alone I am to suffer when my Love is gone. ESS, p. 96, lines I-I4.

II4-8 . LOVE makes men orators. {L9>22) LOVE and business teach eloquence. (Ll;9l)

Holy Sonnet XIX

As humorous is my contritione As my prophane love, and as soone forgott: As ridlingly distempered, cold and hott, As praying, as mute, as infinite, as none. I durst not view heaven yesterday; and to day In prayers, and flattering speaches I court God: To morrow I quake with true feare of his rod.

DP, p. 16, lines .9-11

1L9. LOVE of lads and fire of chats /chips/ is soon in and soon out. (L3>26) Hot LOVE is soon cold. (LhSj.)

The Paradox

Love with excesse of heat, more 7/ong then old, Death kills with too much cold;

ESS, p. 38, lines 7-8

190. LOVE will find a way. (L/31) His Parting from Her

And we can love by letters still and gifts And thoughts and dreams; Love never wanteth shifts'.

ESS, p. 99, lines 71-72

191. LOVE without End has no end. (L533) A perfect LOVE does last eternally. (L53q ) 165 The Good-morrow

If our two loves be one, thou, and I Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

ESS, p. 71, lines 20-21

152* Natural LOVE descends but it does not ascend. (L535) The Autumnall

Since such loves naturall lation is, may still My love descend, and journey downe the hill, Not panting after growing beauties,

ESS, p. 28, lines JLj.7

153. A perfect LOVE does last eternally. (L539)

The Anniversarie

Only our love hath no decay; This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, Running it never runs from us away, But truly keepes his first, last, everlasting day.

ESS, p. 71, lines 7-10

151+. Sound LOVE is not soon forgotten. (L51|2)

Holy Sonnet NIX As humorous is my contritions As my prophane love, and as soone forgctt:

DP, p. 16, lines 5-6

155. We LOVE that dearly that costs us dearest. (L562)

The Autumnall

If we love things long sought, Age is a thing Which we are fifty yeares in compassing.

ESS, p. 28, lines 33~3h 166 l£6. The LOVER is not where he lives but where he loves. (L565) On His Mistris

Feeds on this flatterye, - — That absent lovers one in th'other bee.

ESS, p. 23, lines 25-26

The Canonization

And thus envoke us; you whom reverend love Made one anothers hermitage;

ESS, p. 74, lines 37-38

157. LOVERS live by love as larks live by leeks. (L569) The?/ love too much that die for LOVE. (L546)

The Canonization Mee can dye by it, if not live by love,

ESS, p. 74, line 28

158. LOVERS' vows are not to be trusted. (L570)

Woman's Constancy

So lovers contracts, images of those, Binds but till sleep, death's image, them unloose?

ESS, pp. 42-43, lines 9-10

Holy Sonnet XIX Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one: Inconstancy unnaturally hath begott A constant habit: that when I would net I change in vowes, and in devotions. As humorous is rry contritions As my prophane love, and as soone forgott:

DP, pp. 15-16, lines 1-6

159. A true LOVER'S-knct. (L571) 167 The Token

I beg noe ribbond wrought with thine owns hands, To knit our loves in the fantastick straine Of new-toucht youth;

ESS, p. 10?, lines 5-7

160.-::- LUCY-light, the shortest day and the longest night. (L585)

The Second Anniversary

Thinke that they bury thee, and thinke that rite Laies thee to sleepe but a saint Lucies night.

A, p. 95, lines 119-120

A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, being the shortest day

’TIs the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes, Lucies, xJho scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes,

Since shee enjoyes her long nights festivall. Let mee prepare towards her, and let mee call This houre her Vigill, and her Eve, since this Both the yeares, and the dayes deep midnight is.

ESS, pp. 85-85, lines 1-2; 5-2-55

161. Ever;>T MAN before he dies shall see the devil. (M105)

Holy Sonnet VI

And Gluttonous death, will instantly unjoynt My body, and sou.le, and I shall sleepe a space, But m y fever-waking part shall see that face Whose feare already shakes my ever;f joynt;

For thus I leave the xjcrld, the flesh, the dev ill.

DP, p. 7, lines 5-8; 15

162. MAN is the measure of all things. (CPEP, p. 502)

Ecclogve 168

As man Is of the world, the heart of man, Is an epitome of Gods great booke Of creatures, and man need no farther looke;

P, p. 133, lines 50-52

163. A MAN can die but once. (M219)

The Paradox

Wee dye but once,

ESS, p. 38, line 9

161|. A MAN may strain his nose till it bleed. (M270)

His Parting from Her

Till Fortune, that would rive us. with the deed, Strain her eyes open, and it make them bleed.

ESS, p. 98, lines 61-62

165. A MAN without reason is a beast in season. (M306)

Vpon Mr. Thomas OoryatTs Crudities If man be therefore man, because he can Reason, and laugh, thy booke doth halfe make man.

P, p. 172, lines 13—1

166. A wicked MAN is his own hell. (Ml|17)

Ecclogve

As heaven, to men dispos'd, is every where, So are those Courts, whose Princes animate, Not only all their house, but all their state.

P, pp. 132-133, lines ij.0-l;2

167. The wise MAN is deceived but once, the fool twice. 169 The Triple Poole

And I, which was two fcoles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles be.

ESS, p. 52, lines 21-22

168. A MAN’S house ,is his castle. (MLj.73)

Jealos ie

Now I see many dangers; for that is His realrne, his castle, and his diocesse.

ESS, p. 10, lines 25-26

169. MEN are not angels. (M54U)

The Litanie: XVI

Prom thinking us all sou.le, neglecting thus Our mutuall duties, _Lcrd deliver us. DP, p. 22, lines lL1.3-lIj.i4.

170. It is better to be a MARTYR than a confessor. (M70 /l599 Minsheu Span.Dial, p. 22 And when they do rac rather prooue a martyr then a confess or,J

Iiis Parting from Her

Is't because thou thy selfe art blind, that wee Thy Martyrs must no more each other see? Or tak'st thou pride to break us on the wheel, And view old Chaos In the Pains we feel?

ESS, p. 97j lines l5-l8

171. New MEAT begets a new appetite. (M83D

Variety All things doe willingly in change delight, The fruitfull mother Df our appetite: 170

ESS, p. 10l+, lines 9-10

172. Who lias no MEMORY (understanding) let him have legs. (M871) The Second Anniversary

Forget this world, and scarse thinke of it so, As of old deaths, cast of a yeare agoe. To be thus stupid is Alacrity; Men thus Lethargique haue best Memory.

A, p. 93, lines 61-61).

173. As old as METHUSELAH. (M908)

The First Anniversary

Where is this mankind now? who liues to age, Fit to be made Methu-sa-lem his page?

A, p. 71, lines 127-128

1 7 k .* The first MINUTE after noon is night. (M9S7 )

A Lecture upon the Shadow

Love is a growing, or full constant light; And his first minute, after ncone, is night.

ESS, p. 79, lines 2^-26

Holy Sonnet VI

This is my playes last scene, here heavens appoint My pilgrimages last mile; and my race Idly, yet quickly runne, hath this last pace, My years last inch, my minutes last point,

DP, p. 7, lines I-I4

!75>. x , ' As changeful (inconstant) as the MOON. (1111)

The Will

My constancie I to the planets give; 171 ESS, p. 5I|, line 10

176. The M0.0N directs more than the sun. (M1113)

A Valediction: of Weeping

0 more than Moons.

ESS, p. 69, line 19

177* The MOON is not seen where the sun shines. (M1120)

Ep ithalamion

Here lyes a shee Sunne, and a hee Moone here. She gives the best light to his Spheare,

?, p. 130, lines 8£-86

178. Out of one MOUTH to blow hot and cold. (M12£8)

The Expostulation

Or doth their breath (Both hot and cold at once) make life and death?

ESS, p. 9L, lines 11-12

179. NATURE is the true law. (Hl+fe)

The Progresse of the Soule: XLVIII

, . . without feare or awe Of nature; nature hath no gaole, though shee hath law,

P, p. 31k> lines lp78-l;.30

180. After NICtHT comes the day. (Hl61|)

Kis Parting from Her

And dearest Friend, sine: we must part, droun night With hope of Day, 172 133, p. 99, lines 33-81;

181. NOTHING is good or bad but by comparison. (11298)

The Progresse Df the Soule: LII

Ther’s nothing simply good., nor ill alone, Of every quality comparison, The onely measure is, and judge, opinion.

P, p. 316, lines 518-520

182. There is NOTHING- but Is good for something. (11327) There is NOTHING so bad in which there is not something of good. (328) The Progresse of the Soule: LII

Therfs nothing simply good, nor ill alone, Of every comparison, The onely measure Is, and judge, opinion.

P, p. 316, lines 518-520

The First Anniversary

No euill wants his good:

A, p. 65, line 3

I8 3 . Sweet is the NUT but bitter (hard) Is the shell. (N36O) Not worth a NUTSHELL. (N366)

Communitie:

And when hee hath the kerne11 eate, Who doth not fling away the shell?

ESS, p. 2k > lines 22-2k

18k • OPINION sways the world. (068)

Variety And we made servants to opinion, 173 A monster in no certain shape attir'd, And whose originall is much desir'd, Pormlesse at first, but growing on it fashions, And doth prescribe manners and laws to nations.

ESS, p. 105, lines 50-5lj-

185. As proud as a PEACOCK, (Pl57) The PEACOCK has fair feathers but foul feet. (P158)

Satyre I

He heares not mee, but, on the other side A many-coloured Peacock having spide. Leaves him and mee;

P, p. lij.9, lines 91-93

186. As rare as the PHOENIX. (P256)

Epithalamion: On the Lady Elizabeth

All that is nothing unto this, For thou this day couplest two Phoenixes;

P, p. 127, lines 17-18

. . . one bed containes, through Thee, Two Phoenixes, whose joyned breasts Are unto one another mutuall nests, Where motion kindles such fires, as shall give Yong Phoenixes, and yet the" old shall live.

P, p. 128, lines 19-26

Up then fa ire Phoenix Bride, frustrate the Sunne,

P, p. 128, line 29

The First Anniversary

For euery man alone thinkes he hath got To be a Phoenix, and that there can bee None of that l-rinde, of which he is, but hee.

A, pp. 73-7k, lines 216-218 174 The Canonization

The Phoenix ridle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it, So, to one neutrall thing both sexes fit. Wee dye and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.

ESS, p, 74, lines 23-27

187. He that touches PITCH shall be defiled. (P35>8)

To Sir Henry Wotton

Life is a voyage, and in our lifes wayes Countries, Courts, Towns are Rockes, or Remoraes; They breake or stop all ships, yet our state's such That though then pitch the;/ staine worse, wee must touch.

P, p. ISO, lines 7-10

188. PITY is akin to love. (P370)

Holy Sonnet XIII

Beauty, of pitty, foulnesse onely is A signe of rigour:

DP, p. 10, lines 11-12

189. Stolen PLEASURES are sweetest. (P423)

The Expostulation

Sprinkled among, (all sweeter by our feares And the divine impression of stolne kisses, That seal'd the rest) should now prove empty blisses?

ESS, pp. 94-94, lines 16-lS

His Parting from Her

Stoln (more to sweeten them) cur many blisses Of meetings, conferences, embraeements, kisses?

ESS, p. 98, lines 47-48 190. To hate (shun) one like POISON. (Pl+59) •

Julia

I blush to give her halfe her due; yet say, No poyson's halfe so bad as Julia.

ESS, p. 101, lines 31-32

191. Standing POOLS gather filth. (Pi;65) Variety

And a dead lake that no strange bank doth greet, Corrupts it self and what doth live in it.

ESS, p. 101;, lines 13-11;

192. PRETTINESS dies first (quickly). (?567) BEAUTY does fade like a flower. (3165)

The Anagram

Love built on beauty, soone as beauty, dies.

ESS, p. 21, line 2?

193. PRIDE is the root of all sin. (P578) The Litanie: XVII

Neglecting to chcake sins spawne, Vanitie,

DP, p. 22, line lLj.8

191;. PRIDE that apes humility. (ODEP, p. 3l8)

The Crosse

And then as worst surfetc, of best meates bee, Soe is pride, issued from humility,

DP, p. 27, lines 39-JqO

195. Like PRINCE, like people. (ODEP, p. 519) 176

The Sunne R is ing

Princes doe but play us;

BSS, p. 75j line 23

196. An empty PURSE fills the face with wrinkles. (P6Lj8)

The Autumnal1

But name not Winter-faces, whose skin’s slacke; Lanke, as an unthrift’s purse; but a scules sacke;

ESS, p. 28, lines 37-38

197. Let REASON rule all your actions. (RLj.3)

The Second Anniversary

For shee made ivars, and triumph'd; res on still Did not ouerthrow, but rectifie her will:

A, p. 102, lines 361-362

198. There is a REMEDY for all things but death. (R69)

The Will

To him for whom the passing bell next tolls, T give my physic k bookas;

ESS, p. 55, line 37

199. REWARD and punishment are the walls of a city. (R95)

The First Anniversary Are these but warts, and pock-boles in the face Of th'earth? Thinke so: But yet confesse, in this The worlds proportion disfigured is, That those two legges whereon it doth relie Reward and punishment are tent awrie.

A, p. 76, lines 300-30!;. 200. He RUNS far that never turns again. (R210)

The Progresse of the Soulet XL

And thus he made his foe, his prey, and tombe; Who cares not to turn back, may any whither come,

P, p. 311, lines 399-i|00

201 . SAY well is good but do well is better. (S123)

His Parting from Her

For this to th'comfort of my Dear I vow, My Deeds shall still be what my words are now;

ESS, p. 100, lines 95-96

202. The SEA complains it wants water. (S179) The SEA refuses no river (is never full). (Sl5l)

The Will

To women Dr the sea, /j givey7 my teares.

ESS, p. 51j., line 6

Satyre II -

To out-drinke the sea,

P, p. 151, line 33

203. He that tells his SECRET is another’s servant (slave) (3192)

The Progresse of the Soule: XLIII

I-Iee hath engag'd her; his, she wholy bides; Who not her owne, none others secrets hides.

P, p. 312j lines l±21-!±22

20k. We SEE sleeping that which we wish for waking. (S205 178

/image and Dream/

Then Fantasie is Queene and Soule, and all; She can present joyes meaner then you do; Convenient, and more proportionall. So, if I dreame I have you, I have you, For, all our joyes are hut fantasticall.

ESS, p. £8, lines 10-llj,

205. When the SERPENT is dead the poison will not hurt. (S229)

The First Anniversary

But as some Serpents poison hurteth not, Except it be from the H u e Serpent shot, So doth her vertus need her here, to fit That vntc us; shee working more than it.

A, p. 79, lines ^09-l|12

206. To lick into SHAPE. (3281;)

/ 1 6 2 1 Burton Anat.Mel.Democr.t0 rdr. (1676) 7/2 Enforced as a Bear doth her Whelps, to bring forth this confused lump, I had not time to lick it into f o r m ._/

Loves Progress

And love's a beare-utfhelp borne; if wee'overlicke Our love, and force it new strange shapes to take We erre, and of a lumpe a monster make.

ESS, p. 16, lines Ip—6

The Bracelet

Or were they Spanish. Stamps, still travailing, That are become as Catholique as their King, Those unlick't beare-whelps, unfil'd Pistolets, That, more then cannon-shot, availes or lets,

TP Q c O 1 ~ a ~ 2 Q _ *3 9 j j o o y jO • t~_ j _L — ai.‘ ‘-j 1— /

2 0 7 . The SICKNESS of the body is the health of the soul. (Slj.23)

Holy Sonnet IV 179 Oh my blacke Soule! (now thou art summoned Sy sicknease, deaths herald, and champion;

DP, p. 7 j lines 1-2

208. SILENCE is (gives) consent. (S[|.l|.6)

Elegie: Death

Sad hearts, the lesse they seeme the more they are, (So guiltiest men stand mutest at the harre) Not that they know not, feele not their estate, But extreme sense hath made them desperate.

P, p. 285, lines -5-8

209. . _ He shall sink in his own SIN. (Slj.68)

Holy Sonnet I

I dare not move my dimme eyes any way, Despaire behind, and death before doth cast Such terrour, and my feebled flesh doth waste By sinne in It, which it t'wards hell doth weigh;

D P , p, 12, lines 5-8 i 210. He is nothing but SKIN and bone. (ODEP, p. 595)

His Picture

My body’a a sack of bones, broken within,

ESS, p. 25, line 9

211. SLEEP is the brother (kinsman, cousin) of death. (S526)

The Storme

Sleepc is paines easiest salue, and doth fullfill All offices of death, except to kill,

P, p. 176, lines 35-36 i8o 212. * SLEEP is the image of death. (S52?)

Holy Sonnet X

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and Dreadfull, for, thou art not soe, For, those, whom thou thinks't, thou dost overthrew, Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee; From rest and sleeps, which but thy pictures bee.

DP, p. 9, lines 1-5

To the Lady Bedford

So madarae, as her Soule to heaven is fled, Her flesh rests in the earth, as in the bed;

P, p. 228, lines 27-28

Womans Constancy

So Lovers contracts, images of those, Binds but till sleep, deaths image, them unloose?

ESS, pp. I|2-l\3 j lines 9-10

See also: A sleeping MAH is no better than a dead man. (M337)

Obsequies to the Lord Harrington

Thou seest mee here at midnight, now all rest; Times dead-low water; when all mindes devest To morrows businesse, when the labourers have Such rest in bed, that their last Church-yard grave, Subject to change, will scarce b e 's type of this, How when the cl;yent, whose last hearing is To morrow, sleeps, when the condemned man. (Who when hee opes his eyes, must shut them then Againe by death,) although sad watch hee keepe, Doth practice dying bj a little sleepe,

P, p. 271, lines I B -21}.

2 1 3 . * SEVEN sleepers. (ODEP, p. 577)

The Good-morrow 181

Or snorted we i'the seauen sleepers den?

33S* p. 70* line I}.

21k • As slow as a SNAIL. (S£79) Like a SNAIL* he keeps his house on his back (head). (S580) The BODY is the prison of the soul. (Bi;.97)

The Second Anniversary

Shee* shee, thus richly* and largely hous'd, is gone: And chides vs slcw-pac'd snailes, who crawle vpon Our prisons prison* earth, nor thlnke vs well Longer, then whil'st we beare our brittle shell.

A* p. 99* lines 21+7-250

To Sir Henry ¥otton

Follow7, (for he is easie pac'd) this snaile*

P* p. 182, line 51

Be thou thine owTne home* and in thy selfe dwell; Inne any wrhere, continuance maketh. hell. And seeing the snaile* which every where doth rone, Carrying his. owns house still* still is at home* Follow, (for he Is easie pac'd) this snaile* Bee thine owne Palace, or the world's thy g.alle,

P* p. 182* lines 1+7-52

215. Small SORROWS (griefs) speak, great ones are silent. (S661+)

Elegie: Death

Language thou art too'narrow, and too weake To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speak:

P* p. 281+, lines 1-2

216. The SOUL needs few things, the body many. (S668)

Upon the Annuntiaticn and the Passion 132

Tamely, fraile body, ’ab.staine to day; to day My soule sates twice, Christ hither and away.

DP, p. 29, lines 1-2

217. To grease a fat SOW in the tail. (S682) Claw a CHURL by (Grease a fat sow in ) the tail and he (she) will beray your hand. (C3 8 6 ) Gull a KiTAVE and he will grease your hands. (K123)

A Tale of a Citizen and His Wife

I touch no fat sowes grease,

ESS, p. 101. line 6

218. As lustful as SPARROWS. (S715) The Progresse of the Soule; XX

In this worlds youth wise nature did make hast. Things ripened sooner, and did longer last; Already this hot cocke. In bush and tree, In field and tent, oreflutters his next hen;

P, p. 302, lines 191-191+

Epithalamion: On the Lady Elizabeth

The Sparrow that neglects his life for love,

P, p. 127, line 7

More truth, more courage in these two do shine, Than all thy turtles hai7e , and sparrows, Valentine.

P, p. 130, lines 97-98

219. One may point (look) at a STAR but not pull (reach) at it. (3825) Song

Goe, and catche a falling starre, 183 ESS, p. 29, line 1

220. STARS are not seen by sunshine. (S826)

The Litanie: XII. The Doctors

Their zeale may be our sinne. Lord let us runne Meane wales, and call them stars, but not the Sunne.

DP, p. 21, lines 116-117

221. As hard as a STONE (flint, rod}. (S8 7 8 )

A Valediction: of my Name, in the Window

My name engrav'd herein, Doth contribute my firmnesse to this glasse, Which, ever since that charme, hath beene As hard, as that which grav’d it, was;

ESS, p. 61>, lines 1-1;.

222. As still as a STONE. (S879)

Elegie on the L. C.

Here needs no marble Tombe, since hee is gone, He, and about him, his, are turn'd to stone.

P, p. 287, lines 25-26

223. After a STORM comes a calm (fair weather). (3908)

The Calme Storrces chafe, and some wears out themselves, or us; In calmes, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.

P, p. 1 7 8 , lines 5-6

22l|_. The STREAM cannot rise above its source. (ODEP, p. 625)

Holy Sonnet XVII 191* Here the a dry ring her my mind did whett To seeke thee God; so streames do shew the head,

DP, p. 15, lines 5-6

225. The SUBJECTS' love is the king’s lifeguard. (ODEP, p. 628) MEH (Men’s love), not walls, make the city (prince) safe. (M555) The Anniversarie

Here upon earth, w e ’are Kings, and none hut wee Can be such Kings, nor of subjects bee; Who is so safe as wee? Where none can doe Treason to us, except one of us two.

ESS, p. 72, lines 23-26

226. The rising, not the setting, SUM 5s worshipped by most men. (3979) The Sunne Rising

Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,

ESS, p. 72, line 1

227. The 3TJTT shines upon all alike. (S985)

IIis Parting from Her

Though cold and darkness longer hang somewhere, Yet Phoebus equally lights all the Sphere.

ESS, p. 99, lines 85-86

Variety The sian that sitting in the chaire of light Sheds flame into whatever else seernes bright,

ESS, p. 10l|., lines 5-6

228. The SUIT together with man generates man. (S9 8 6 ) The Progresse of the Soule: II

Thee, eye of heaven, this great Soule envies not, By thy male force, is all wee have, hegot.

P, p. 295’, lines 11-12

229. To set forth the SUIT with a candle (lantern, taper). (3988)

Resurrection, imperfect

A better Sun rose before thee to day, Who, not content to 1enlighten all that dwell On the earths face, as thou, enlightned hell, And made the darke fires languish in that vale, As, at thy presence here, our fires grow pale.

DP, p. 28, lines l±-8

Epithalamicn: On the Lady Elizabeth.

Thou mak’st a Taper see What the sunne never saw,

P, p. 127, lines 19-20

230. Two SUiJS cannot shine in one sphere. (S992)

His Parting from Her

I will net look upon the quickning Sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run;

ESS, p. 99, lines 73-74

The Sunne Rising If her eyes have not blinded thine,

ESS, p. 73, line 1.5

Ecclogve

At Court the spring already advanced is, The Sunne stayss longer up: and yet not his The glory is, farre other, other fires. Firstj zeale to Prince and State; then loves desires Burne in one brest, and like heavens two great light The first doth governe dayes, the other nights.

P, p. 132, lines 15-20

231. Like a SWAlf, he sings before his death. (S1028)

The First Anniversary

And all the world would be one dying Swan, To sing her funerall prayse, and vanish than.

A, p. 79, lines [[07-508

Epithalamion: XVII. The Benediction

Blest payre of Swans, Oh may you interbring Daily new joyes, and never sing, Live, till all grounds of wishes faile, Till honor, yea till wisedome grow so stale, That, new great heights to trie, It must serve your ambition, to die;

P, p. 138, lines 171-176

2 3 2 . TAKE it or leave it. (T28)

Satyre I

For better or worse, take mee, or leave mee: To take, and leave mee is adultery.

P, p. 1[[6, lines 25-26

233. TEARS in the eyes, ruth in the heart. (T8 3 )

Holy Sonnet III

In my Idolatry what showres of raine Mine eyes did waste? ¥hat griefs my heart did rent?

DP, p. 13j lines 5-6

The Lamentat ions of Jeremy 187

And for my city daughters sake, mine eye Doth breake mine heart.

DP, p. li.3, lines 2J+9-2£0

23^-. His THREAD is .spun. (T2lj.9) A Hymne to God the Father

I have a sinne of feare, that when I have spunne My last thred, I shall perish on the shore;

DP, p. $l t lines 13~lk

235. TIME devours all things (consumes, wears out). (T329)

Satyre II

Whom time (xhhich rots all, and makes botches poxe, And plodding on must make a calfe an oxe) Hath, made a Lawyer,

P, p. 1^1, lines L;l-i|3

2 3 6 .* When you do hear a TOLL or knell then think upon your passing bell. (T375>) /l62i; Donne Devotions xvii, p. 9 8 : Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee ._/

The Will

To him for whom the passing bell next tolls, I give my physick booke3 ;

ESS, p. 55, lines 37-38

237. No TRUST to be given to a woman's word (a woman). (T5£l) LOVERS vows are not to be trusted. (Lf>70)

The Expostulation Are vowes so cheape with women, or the matter Where of they'are made, that they are writ in water And bloune sway with wir.de? 138

ESS, p. 9k, lines 9-11

238. The TRUTPI shows best being naked. (T589)

Epithalamion made at Line Dines Inne

. . . for thou, alone. Like vertue'and truth, art best In nakednesse;

P, p. li].3, lines 77-78

239. As true as a TURTLE to her mate. (T62l|.)

Epithalamion: On the Lady Elisabeth

More truth, more courage in these two do shine, Then all thy turtles have, and sparroxtfs, Valentine.

P, p. 180, lines 97-98

2it0. He that is not handsome at TWENTY, nor strong at thirty, nor rich at forty, nor wise at fifty, will never be hand some, strong, rich, or wise. (T6 3I)

The Autumnall

If we love things long sought, Age is a thing Which we are fifty yeares in compassing.

ESS, p. 2 8 , lines 33-3k

2Lil. She'has a TYMPANY with two legs (heels). (T6I4.S) /She is pregnant (Tilley)J

The Anagram

And though in childbirtbs labour she did lie, Midwifes would sweare, 1twere but a ty.mps.nie.

ESS, p. 22, lines !|.9-?0

2l|.2. VARIETY takes away satiety. (Vl8 ) CHANGE is sweet. (C229) 189 The Indifferent

And by Loves sweetest Part* Variety, she swore,

ESS, p. 1(.2, line 20

Var iety

The heavens rejoyce in notion, why should I Abjure my so much lov'd variety, And not with many youth and love divide? Pleasure is none, if not divers ifi'd:

ESS, p. IOI4, lines 1 —Ij.

2i|3. VIRTUE (Valor) is the beauty (nobleness) of the soul (mind). (V8 3 ) To Mr. R. V/.

If men be worlds, there Is in every one Some thing to answere in some proportion All the itfcrlds riches: And in good men, this, Vertue, our-formes forme and our soules soule, is.

P, p. 210, lines 29-32

2h,k. VIRTUE never grows old. (V8 7 )

The First Anniversary

But she, in whom, to such maturity, Vertue was groune, past grouth, that it must die.

A, p. 79, lines i;13-lili|.

21|£. He cannot be VIRTUOUS that is not rigorous. (V^l)

Holy Sonnet XIII

Beauty, of pitty, foulnesse onely is A signe of rigour:

DP, p. 10, lines 11-12 190 2JL).6. Running WATER is better than standing. (¥103) Standing POOLS gather filth.

Change

Waters stincke soone, if in one place they bide, And in the vast sea are worse putrifi'd: But when they kisse one banke, and leaving this Never looke backe, but the next banke doe kisse,

ESS, p. 20, lines 31-35

Variety

Rivers the clearer and more pleasing are, Where their fair spreading streams run wide and farre:

ESS, p. 101,, lines 11-12.

Zk7. To fetch (wring) WATER (blood) out of a stone (flint). (El0 7 )

Twicknam Garden Or a stone fountains weeping out my yeare.

ESS, p. 8i|, line 18

2k8. To write in WATER, (Wll[|.)

The Expostulation

Are vowes so cheaps with women, or the matter Whereof theyTare made, that they are writ in Twater,

ESS, p. 91)., lines 9-10

21^9. The WEAKEST to the wall. (Wl99)

Satyrs I

Now wre are in the street; He first of all Ircprovidsntly proud, creepes to the wall, And so imprisoned, and hsm’d in by mee Sells for a little state his libertie; 191 P, p. lij.7, lines 67-70

2^0. One WEDGE drives out another, (W23i|) The thin end of the WEDGE is to be feared. (ODEP, p. 61}9)

Satyre II

Like a wedge in a blocke,

P, p. 152, line 71

2£l. Good WINE makes good blood. (1/14.6 1 )

The Autumnall

There he. as wine in June, enrages blood,

ESS, p. 27, line 26

2 5 2 . To be under another’s (mother's) WING. (WL;.95>)

Ilcly Sonnet I Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.

DP, p. 13, lines 13-1^-

2^3. Who Xtfeens himself *w i 3 e , WISDOM wots him a fool. (W^22)

The Triple Foole

Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee.

ESS, p. 52, line 22

25k- A WOLE (fox) may change his hair but not his heart (nature, malice). (W6l6 ) As wily (crafty) as a FOX. (F629) As lecherous as a GOAT, (G167) Change 192

Foxes and goats; all beasts change when they please i Shall women, more hot, wily, wild then these, Be bound to one man,

ESS, p. 20, lines 16-18

255. Trust not a WOMAN when she weeps. {¥6 3 8 )

Twicknam G-arden

Nor can you more judge womans thoughts by teares.

ESS, p. 8U . line 2i|

2^6. A WOMAN dees that which is forbidden her. (¥650)

The Progresse of the Soule: XX

. . . and t'her whom the first man did wive (Whom and her race, on 177 ^orbiddings drive)

P, p. 298, lines 6 6 -8 ?

The Expostulation

Hee first desire you false, would wish, you just?

ESS, p. 95, lines 21-22

257. A WOMAN is the weaker vessel. (W655) The First Anniversary

Shee in whom vertue was so much refin'd, That for Alloy vnto so pure a minde Shee tooke the weaker sex,

A, p. 72, lines 177-179

258. A WOMAN says nay (no) and means aye. (¥660) A FOMA?!’S heart and her tongue are not relatives. (W6?2)

The Exp 0 ctu1at ion 10-5

Or must we reads you quite from what you speak And finde the truth out the wrong way?

ESS, p. 95, linos 20-21

259. WOMEN are as wavering (changeable;, inconstant.) as the wind. (¥698)

Song

And finde / what winde / Serves to*advance an honest minde.

And swears,/ No where. / Lives a woman true, and fa ire.

SSS, p. 29, lines 7-18

260. WOMEN are great talkers. (¥701)

Some women haue come taciturn^tv Some Nunneries, some graines

A, p. 80, lines 523-/2/

261. WOMEN laugh when they can and weep when they ’wi l l . (W7 1 3 ) WOMEN naturally deceive, weep, and spin. (¥71 6 ) WOMEN weep and sicken 'when they list. (¥720)

The Will

To women or the sea, /i givs/ my teares,

ESS, p. 5/, line 6

Not to be able to see WOOD for the trees. (¥733)

/image and Dream/ 191+ Where many WORDS are, the truth goes by. (W923) Pull of COURTESY full of craft. (O732)

His Parting from Her

Much more I could, but many words have made That, oft, suspected which men would persuade;

ESS, p. 100, lines 101-102

261+. Not WORDS but deeds, (W820)

The Progress of the Soule: XLII

To Abels tent he stealeth In the darke, On whose skirts the bitch slept, 'ere she could barke, Attach'd her with streight gripes, yet hee call'd those Embracements of love; to loves work he goes, Where deeds move more then words;

P, p. 312, lines 1;.li+ — i+17

26£. This WORLD is a stage and every man plays his part. (V/982)

The Second Anniversary

Shee, to whom all this world was but a stage.

A, p. 93j line 67-

How others on our stage their parts did Act;

A, p. 100, line 286

On IIis Mistris Men of Prance, . . . the rightest companie Of Players which uppon the worlds stage bee.

ESS, p. 21+, lines 33-36

Holy Sonnet VI

This is my playes last scene,

DP, p. 7, line 1 266. When I die, the WORLD dies with me. (W891)

A feaver

But when thou from this world wilt goe, The whole world vapors with thy breath.

ESS, p. 61, lines 7-8

The First Anniversary

But though it he too late to succour thee, Sicke world, yea dead, yea putrified, since shes Thy intrinsique Balme, and thy preseruative, Gan neuer be renew’d, thou neuer Hue, I (since no man can make thee lius) will trie, What we may gaine by thy Anatomy.

A, p. 69, lines 95-60

Well dy'de the world, that we might liue to see This world of wit, in his Anatorr.es:

A, p. 6.5, lines 1-2

267. The WORLD, the flesh, and the devill. (ODER, p. 732)

Holy Sonnet VI

For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devill.

DP, p. 7, line l!|.

Holy Sonnet XVII

Least the World, fleshe, yea Devill putt thee out.

DP, p. 15, line lip 196

List of Works Cited

Alvarez, A. The School of Donne. New York, 1961.

Beardsley, Monroe C. Aesthetics. Yew York, 195^.

Bennett, Joan, Four Metaphysical Poets. Yew York, I960.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well Wrought Urn. Yew York, 19^-7•

Bush, Douglas. English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century! Rev", ed. Oxford, 1962.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. Y. Rob ins on. 2nd ed. Boston, 1957-

Clark, Donald L. Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance. Yew York, 1963! Coffin, Charles M. John Donne and the New Philosophy. New York, 1958.

Donne, John. The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne! ed. Helen Gardner. Oxford, 1965.

The Divine Poems, ed. Helen•Gardner. Oxford, 1952. John Donne: The Anniversaries, ed. Frank Manley! Balt imore, 1963".

______The Poems of John Donne, ed. Sir Herbert J. C. Gr iers on. 2 vols'. London, T5l 2 .

Drayton, Michael. Minor Poems of Michael Drayton, ed. Cyril Brett. Oxford, 19075

Dryden, John. "An Essay of Dramatick Poesy," Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker. 2 vols. New York, 1961.

Eliot, T. S. "Donne in Our Time," A Garland for John Donne, ed. Theodore Spencer, pp. 1-19. Cambridge, Ma3s ., 1931. 197 Felheolter, Sister M. Clarita, "Proverbialism in Coriolanus." Unpublished dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1956. Gardner, Helen, ed. John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, Hew Jersey, 1962.

______ed. The Metaphysical Poets. Oxford, 1961.

Groom, Bernard. The Diction of Poetry from Spenser to Bridges. Toronto, 1955•

Eeywood, John. A Dialogue of Proverbs, ed. Rudolph E. Habenicht. Berkeley, 1963•

Hunt, Clay. Donne's Poetry: Essays in Literary Analysis. Hew Haven, 19565 Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the English Poets, ed. Warren Eleischauer. Hew York, 195175 ~

Knights, L. C. "On the Social Background of Metaphysical Poetry," Scrutiny, XIII (1965), 37-52. Leavis, F. R. "The Line of Wit," Seventeenth Century English Poetry, ed. William R. Keast, pp! 31-69. Hew York, 1962.

Legouis, Pierre. Donne the Craftsman. Paris, 1928.

Leishman, J. B. The Monarch of Wit. London, 1965.

Lewis, C. S. "Donne and Love Poetry in the Sex-enteenth Century," Seventeenth Century Studies Presented to Sir Herbert Grierson^ pp." 6)4 -SIp' 1 Oxford, T53B7

Lievsay. J. L. Stefano Guazzo and the English Renaissance: 1575-1675- Chapel Hill, 1961. Louthan, Doniphan. The Poetry of John Donne: A Study In Expl icat lonl Hew Yorh, 1'951 •

Mahocd, M. M. Poetry and Humanism. London, 1950.

Marts, Louis. The Poetry of Meditation. Hew Haven, 1956.

Mauch, Thomas Karl, "The Role of the Proverb in Early Tudor Literature." Unpublished dissertation, University of California at Leo Angeles, 1963.

Miles, Josephine. "The Language of the Donne Tradition," Eras and Modes in English Poetry, 2nd ed., pp. 20- 32, Berkeley, 196h , 198

Moloney, Michael P. John Donne: His Flight from Medieval ism. Urbana, 1944* Owst, G. R. Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England. Cambridge, 19^3•

Praz, Mario. "Donne’s Relation to the Poetry of His Time," A Garland for John Donne, ed. Theodore Spencer, pp. 51-?2. Gloucester, Mass., 1958 /l93l/.

Price, Kersward T. "The Function of Imagery in Webster," Elizabethan Drama: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. R a l p h -'J. Kaufmahn. New ‘iTork, 1961.

Ramsay, Mary Paton. "Donne’s Relation to Philosophy." A Garland for John Donne, ed. Theodore Spencer, pp. 101-120."Gloucester, Mass., 1958 /I93l7.

Reynolds, E. E. St. Thomas More. New York, 1957*

Rooney, William J. "’The Canonization’: The Language of Paradox Reconsidered," ELH, XXIII, 36-47*

Rugoff, Milton A. Donne’s Imagery. New York, 1939.

Sharp, R. L. "Some Light on Metaphysical Obscurity and Roughness," SP, XXXI (1934), 497-518.

Sidney, Sir Philip. The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Wi11iam A . Ringler, Jr. Oxford, 1962.

Simpson, Evelyn M. A Study of the Prose ’Works of John Donne. 2nd ed. Oxford7 1962".

Sloan, Thomas F. "The Rhetoric in the Poetry of John Donne," 3EL, III, 31-44* Smith, Charles G. Shakespeare's Proverb Lore. Cambridge, Mass.. 19637

Smith, William George, and Heseltine, Janet E. The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 2nd ed. Revised 67/ Sir Paul Harvey. Oxford, 1949.

Stein, Arnold. "Donne's Harshness and the Elizabethan Tradition," SP, XLI (1944), 390-409.

"Donne’s Obscurity and the Elizabethan Tradition," ELH, XIII (1946), 98-118. Taylor, Archer. The Proverb. Cambridge, Mass., 1931* 199 Tilleyj .Morris Palmer. A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the BTxteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Ann Arbor, l9fj0.

Tuve, Rosemond. Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery. Chicago r 19^-71 Ungerj Leonard. Donne’s Poetry and Modern Criticism. Chicago, 1950. Vanderheide, Sister Marie Agatha, S. P. .’’Some Functions of Proverbs in Romeo and Juliet." Unpublished master's thesis, Catholic University 0.^ America, 1996.,

VJh.it ing, Bartlett Jere. Chaucer’s Use of Proverbs. Cambridge, Mass 193U ■ ' Proverbs in the Earlier English Drama. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature. Vol. XIV. Cambridge, Mass., 1939. Willey, Basil. The Seventeenth Century Background. New York.. VJW- Williamson, George. "Donne and the Poetry of Today," A Garland for John Donne, ed. Theodore Spencer, pp. 1.53 -17b • Gloucester, Mass., 1999 /1931/. The Donne Tradition. New York, 195>9.

Wilson, Thomas. The Arte of Rhetorique. Facsimile Repro- duct ior.. Gainesville , 1962 , 2 0 0

Index to Poems

The Anniversaries

The First Anniversary: 3 , --9, 36 , 37* 66, k7, 51, 98, 116, 120, 122, 129, 173, 182, 1 8 6 , 199, 205 ^ 231, ?l\k., 257, 260, 266

The Second Anniversary: 2, 12, 20, 21, 22, 29, 66, 70, 121, 131, 160, 172, 197, 2i[>, 265

The Divine Poems

The Crosse: 16, kl, 196

Holy Sonnet I: 209, 252

Holy Sonnet III: 233

Holy Sonnet IV: 17, 207

Holy Sonnet VI: 128, 129, 161, 17k, 266, 267 Holy Sonnet IX: 93-

Holy Sonnet X: 7, 6?, 93, 212 Holy Sonnet XIII: 8l. 188, 2i<

Holy Sonnet XVII: 50, 22k, 267

Holy Sonnet XVIII: 72

Holy Sonnet XIX: !■., 36, 76, 136, ll.[.2, lk7, lf'6, Hymn to God, my God: 1|1, 62

Hymne to God the Father: 23k The Lamentations of Jeremy: 233

The Litanie: 23, 66, -l-9; 60, 92, 125, 169, 193, 220

Resurrection, imperfect: 96, 106, 112, 229 201 To Mr. Tilman after he had taken orders: 6l

Upon the Annunciation and Passion: 28, 62, 21.6

The Elegies

The Anagram: 10, 73, 115, 116, 123, 1°2, 2hl

The Autumnal 1: 5, 3 8 , 67, 7?, 107, 138, 152, 155, ln6, 2i;.0, 251 The Bracelet: 95, 133# 206

Change: 31# 83# 91, 132, 256, 255 The Comparison: 35

The Expostulation: 17, 71, 117, 155, 1?8, 109, 2 3 7 , 258, 256, 258 His Parting from Her: 56, 57, 82, 8 3 , 8 5 . 130, 1 3 6 , 139, lij.1, 152, 155, 157, 150, 165, 170, 100, 189, 201, 227, 230, 263

His Picture: 210

/image and Dream/: 26, 109, 205, 262 Jealcsie: 168

Julia: 65, 190

Loves Progress: 53, 55, 95, 97, 206

Ob, Let mee net serve: 7n

Cn His Mistris: 8, 3 0 , 5 8 , 88, 117, 156, 265

The Perfume: 33

A Tale of a Citizen and His Wife: 111, 217

Variety: 31, 52, li|l, 171, 1^5, 191, 227, 2 5 2 , 2i|6

Spicedes and Obsequies

Elegie: death: 102, 208, 215

Elegis on the L, C,: 222

Elegie cn Mistris Boulstred: 93 202

Elegie -upon the untimely death of Prince Iienry: 6

Obsequies to the Lord Harrington: 6i|, 212

Ep igrams

Gales and Guyana: 6 3

Mercurius Gallo-Eelgicus: L|.Q, 55

Epithalaraions

Ecclogue: 119, 162, 166, 230

Epithalamion: 6 , 76, 99, 231

Epithalamion made at Lincclnes Inne: 238

Epithalamion: On the Lady Elizabeth: 32, 56, 12ij, 177, 186, 2 1 8 , 229, 239

Herolcall Epistle

Sapho to Philaenis: 27

Letters

The Calme: 53, 223

To the Countesse of Huntington: l h & , li;7

To the Countess of Salisbury: 32

To the Lady Bedford: 8 6 , 212

To Mr. I. L.: 87

To Mr. P.. W.: 2 k 3

T d Mr. S. E.: 89

To Mr. T. W .: 65 To Sir Henry Goodyere: 127

To Sir Henry Wotton: 7 8 , 128, 1 8 7 , 2l!+

The Storme: 109, 211 203

The Progrease of tlie Soule: 0, 22, l;3, 78, 100, 118, 131, 1 7 9 , l8 l, 182, 2 0 0 , 2 0 3 , 2 1 8 , 2 2 8 , 2 5 6 , 26k

Sat 7/res

Satyre I: 11, 113, 185, 232', 21+9 Satyre II: 202, 235, 2^0

Vpon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities: 165

Songs and Sonnets

Aire and Angells: 7

The Anniversarie: 153, 225

The Apparition: 126

Breaks of Da}/: 1+5

The Broken Heart: 101

The Canonization: 25, 59, 6 8 , 7n , ll+O, 156, 157, 186

Gommunitie: 183

The Dissolution: 6 l, 77, 85

The Extasie: 10

Farewell to Love: lljlj.

A Feaver: 266

The Flea: 115

Song: G-oe, and catche: 51+, 219, 259

The Good-morrow: 10, 8 l, l5l, 213

The Indifferent : 21/2

A Jeat Ring Sent: IOI4., 115

A Lecture upon the Shadow: I7I+

Loves Diet: 2l\., 135 Loves Exchange: IJ4.6 2 Oi|

The Message: 69, 137

Negative Love: 88

A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day: 91, 160

The Paradox: li|9, 163

The Prohibition: 103

The Relique: 43

The Sunne Rising: 195, 226, 230

The Token: 82, 110, 159

The Triple Foole: 80, 102, 167, 253

Titficknam Garden: 15, 68, 257, 255 The Undertaking: 13

Valediction: Of the Booke: 1

Valediction: of my name in the Window: lLj.3, 221

Valediction: of Weeping: 176

The Will: 15, 39, 70, 75, 90, 108, l5l, 175. 19*, 202, 2 3 6 , 261

Witchcraft by a Picture: 10, 105

Woman's Constancy: 158, 212 Vita

Arthur William Pitts, Jr., sen of Arthur William Pitts and Helen Armstrong Pitts, was born February 11, 1933) in Corry, Pennsylvania. He attended St. Edward's School, Corry Junior High School, and Ccrry Senior High School, from which he was graduated in 1950. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University in 195^-, with a major in English, and a Master of Arts degree in English from Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C., in I960. From 1953 to I960 he was a teacher of Latin at the Landon School for Boys, Beth.esda, Maryland, and an Instructor of English at Gannon College, Erie, Pennsylvania, 1960-61. From 1961 to 1963) he held a teaching assistantship in English at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louis iana. Since 1963 he has been an Assistant Processor of English at State University College at Buffalo, New York.

He is married to the former Deirdre Dwen of Bunkie, Louisiana, and is the father of six children. EXAMINATION AND THESIS REPORT

Candidate: Pitts, Arthur !Wi3.1i:ajn, Jr.

Major Field: English

Title of Thesis: John Donne's Use of Proverbs in His Poetry

Approved:

ajor Professor and Chairman

Dean of the Graduate School

EXAMINING COMMITTEE

Date of Examination:

( h jL . -u,. A / /